On My Wings
by Sorre
Summary: Cameron Gold, an entomologist and anime enthusiast, wakes up in Hueco Mundo. No, he doesn't get to be a badass dragon or tiger. His hollow form... is a nymph. God help him... Oh wait, Yhwach wants him dead on principle... !Reincarnation/Transmigrant, !Survival, !Eventual OP
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone, Sorre here. I wanted to try my hand at a fic that was based on survival. Re:Monster and similar stories always interested me so I figured why not?**

 **Chapter 1: Mask**

Cameron "Cam" Gold was never much of a philosopher. Sure, he had taken a few courses, but those were the result of a liberal arts undergrad. He appreciated the works of Thucydides and Descartes as much as the next millennial, which is to say, none whatsoever. No, his interest lay in things a lot smaller than the principles of just war or the complexities of freedom of will. He was an entomologist who specialized in winged insects. Modern day airplanes and helicopters flew by cutting the air. Their wings were curved on top to ensure that air traveled more slowly over the top than the bottom, allowing the plane to rise. Insects… didn't do that, nor did they have feathers like birds. Still, they were the most efficient fliers in the world and he was fascinated. After getting his master's, he immediately applied for a certification in aerodynamics so he could compare different methods of flight. Needless to say, the dubious existence of an afterlife couldn't be further from his mind.

So when he was bumped into an oncoming subway, he did not expect to ever wake up again. Surprise, surprise, he opened his eyes to find himself in the middle of a forest. No, in a way, he could live with the idea of life after death. That was, after all, the point of so many religions throughout history. He figured at least one of them had to have got it right. What he couldn't reconcile was that he was no longer human. Sure, there was no cosmic law that says he'd be a human again, or any cosmic law that he was aware of at all, but he deserved to at least be human again, right? Assuming the trees surrounding him were roughly the same size as the ones from his previous life, he was about the size of a chihuahua. He could barely stumble over some of the larger roots.

Any grief at his own death was cut short with the trembling earth. Remembering he was now about the size of a football, he quickly ducked behind a large root and dug into the soft, moist soil. An instant later, the tree he was hiding under shattered like a marble pillar that pissed off Kratos as an elephant was thrown through it. Cameron paled. The elephant had three pairs of tusks that curled around its head. What was more striking however was its rough, blue hide and mask. The mask was bone-white and shaped distinctly like a human skull with its teeth wrapping around the elephant's trunk that he looked closely, the "tree" he was hiding under was not so much a tree as a ridiculously large stalagmite made of some pale, unknown quartz that somewhat resembled a tree. 'Oh, fuck, that's a hollow,' he thought to himself. This monumental revelation was immediately followed by, 'Oh fuck, I'm in Hueco Mundo. I died. I'm a hollow.'

Then, a second hollow, undoubtedly the one that threw the first through Cameron's tree, burst through the underbrush. It was shaped like a gorilla with a mask reminiscent of three pieces of driftwood tied together. It lunged at the elephant hollow, but its opponent recovered in time and lashed out with a whip-like trunk that struck the ape across its torso. The two hollows fought on while Cameron connected the dots. All around, he could see lesser hollows flee from the chaos that was quickly devolving into a slugfest. 'Do I move? How fast am I? For that matter, what the fuck am I?'

He could, of course, tell he was no longer human. If the obvious lack of height wasn't a jarring clue, his drastically expanded vision would be a massive clue. At the moment, he was lodged into the earth foot below the tree with his head pointed down, the direction he had been frantically digging a few moments prior. Even so, he could see perfectly fine above and behind him. From that expanded field of view, he concluded that he was an insect of some sort. No other animal, except a handful of fish, had such a wide field of vision and he was most certainly on dry ground. Or in damp soil, as it were. Then again, Harribel was most certainly a fish… landshark… thing... He also squirmed and felt two extra appendages that grasped the earth with trembling claws. 'Please don't let me be a cockroach,' he prayed. Seeing how he had no idea how fast he was, he decided that it'd be a bad idea to begin testing now. Hollows were as diverse as individual souls and he had no intention of finding out he could only hop around vertically like a crazy cricket.

Eventually, the fighting came to an end. The gorilla had triumphed and devoured its opponent with repulsive glee. Cameron was filled with a ravenous hunger as he watched the carnage. 'This is my life… at least the food is aplenty?'

 **Author's Note**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.**

 **Pat reon Sorre**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Survival**

By the time the fighting stopped, the elephant's corpse lay broken on the forest floor, its blood seeping through the damp soil. Its ivory tusks littered the earth like grave markers. Cameron thought that if he focused hard enough, he could feel the elephant's blood seeping into the earth and being devoured by the tree-like quartz. Several yards away, the gorilla stood, cradling a torn stump where its arm used to be. It sported several gashes along its torso and its leg didn't look entirely straight, but it stumbled towards its downed quarry anyway. With one good arm, it tore apart the elephant's fractured mask in a final act of contempt before devouring it gleefully. When it was suitably distracted by the large carcass, Cameron righted himself and peaked his head out of the hole beneath the quartz tree.

His eyes caught sight of the pool of blood; the victor was not a cleanly eater. 'Fuck,' he swore to himself. He knew he was an insect, three pairs of legs and a drastically expanded field of view hinted at that much, but now he could see exactly what he was reflected back at him and he wasn't happy. As an entomologist, he was well aware of the superiority of insects gram for gram. Insects were faster, stronger, and had better senses than any other type of animal and if they were human-sized, they would undoubtedly be sitting at the top of the food chain. He could have been a beetle; the fastest, strongest, and arguably smartest insects were all beetles. Hell, some could even shoot flaming acid. He could have been a hornet or an ant with insane venom or ridiculously disproportionate strength. Or maybe, given some luck, he could have been an awesome praying mantis and had knife-arms like a scyther from Pokemon. Instead, he was a nymph.

He looked down into the pool of blood and saw perhaps the most hideous face he had ever seen greet him. His eyes were massive, compound things that were so large that they almost circled his entire the crown of his head to the base of his neck, he could see three spines stick out. At the very top was a large horn, as long as his own head, that jutted out menacingly. If he didn't know better, he would swear he was wearing a helmet. His mask stretched from his horn to the base of his neck, connected by the trail of bone on the back of his head. The mask looped around to cover the rest of his face, caressing his eyes and making them seem almost proportionate. Without the mask, he was sure his bulbous eyes would stick out a good five inches in either direction. The mask was distinctly unnerving, with teeth that curled outwards like a traditional Japanese hanya's. Its lower jaw was missing however, leaving room for his own to project outwards with two long spikes of bone.

'At least I can guess my adjuchas form,' he mused. A nymph was the colloquial word for the larval stage of several water dwelling insects. Specifically, he was a dragonfly nymph, as characterized by his massive lower jaw. 'It's like having a hand for my lower jaw… God, I look so damn freaky.' He slowly extended his jaw forward and found that he could move it just like an arm. He reached out and gave the pool of blood a tentative brush. He brought his "hand" back and was surprised at the sweetness of the blood. 'Of course, this is my life now,' he despaired. He had gone from a promising scientist to one of his specimen. More than that, his very existence would be directly tied to his willingness to cannibalize his fellow souls.

Eventually, his hunger overwhelmed him and although the sweetness of the elephant's blood was overpowering, he managed to lap it up off the muddy ground. Soon, he ran out of the life-giving substance and, unwilling to risk the gorilla's ire, ducked back into his tree hollow. Now that he had his first sip of the sole source of nutrition in Hueco Mundo, he felt a gnawing hunger grow within him.

'What do I know about dragonfly nymphs?' he asked himself. When he was alive, dragonflies were among his favorite insects, but much of that focus was on their ability to hunt and fly. He knew comparatively little about their larval stages. 'They are ambush predators and can camouflage well into the dirt. They also live exclusively in the water, but that's obviously not the case for me. I should remember that. Not all of the qualities of a dragonfly nymph will carry over. They also have strong jaws if I remember right and can hunt prey much larger than themselves. I don't think it'll help me fight the gorilla, though. If I have any special talents as a hollow, I doubt they'll manifest until I'm stronger.'

With what little he knew about his new physiology, he came up with a plan to hunt. Admittedly, it wasn't much of a plan. As with all ambush predators, he would have to rely on his prey approaching. The goal was to become an adjuchas as quickly as possible, preferably with a short gillian stage. Then, the sky would quite literally be the limit. 'I should also remember, I can regain human form if I choose to become an arrancar. But that would mean fighting Soul Society for Aizen… damn…' He swore that if he chose to become an arrancar, it would be well after he achieved his final form as a vasto lorde and he would immediately work for his second release.

'Baby steps, Cameron.' First, he would kill one of those lesser hollows that were scared off by the gorilla's earlier rampage. Second, he'd leave a small mound of leftovers outside his door. He'd have to ensure that it wasn't large enough to pique the curiosity of the greater hollows, but enticing enough that it would not go ignored by his ideal prey. Third, by using the leftover cadavers as bait, he would gain weight quickly. His immediate objective was to grow large enough to hunt something as large as that gorilla.

He dug into the earth with only his eyes and horn left above ground. As he expected, a small hollow in the shape of a squirrel came darting around the edge of the ruined glade, hoping to scrunge some scraps from the large ape. His jaw lashed out with speed he could barely recognize as his own and, with two bone prongs, speared the squirrel through its neck, destroying its vocal cords and killing it instantly. Ignoring his prey's death throes, he dragged it into the hollow and began the novel experience of consuming raw meat.

It had a gamy flavor, sweet, as the elephant's blood was, but almost cloyingly so. He wasn't entirely fond of the flavor, but his mandibles came down on the poor creature anyway. 'Noted, my mandibles can break bone. I now officially know what a soul tastes like, isn't that a disturbing thought,' he mused. He made sure to leave a rear leg and tossed it out of the burrow. The bait settled a yard away from the quartz tree and Cameron the nymph settled as well to wait.

His patience was rewarded and by the time the gorilla finished eating and wandered off, he managed to snag a small lizard, another squirrel, and a frog. It was the frog that gave him the most trouble. Rather than landing outside his burrow to eat, the frog launched its tongue to grasp the bait from a distance. Seeing this, Cameron was filled with an unreasonable anger and threw out his own appendage. His labium, the lower jaw of a nymph, grasped the frog's tongue and pierced it, nailing it to the bait. The frog screeched in agony, making him cringe. It tried to pull away, but failed as he dug his six legs into the dirt. Being roughly the same size, the frog lost to the nymph who had a much better grip on the earth.

Eventually, he pulled it closer, but was caught off guard when the frog stopped resisting halfway through. Instead, Cameron heard several cracks and bones shot out of the frog's body, covering it in crimson blood. It jumped towards him, its newly made bone-claws outstretched to spear its captor.

'Shit!' he dislodged his labium and only just managed to parry a raking claw with his twin prongs. He felt a chill run down his metaphorical spine. Looking down, he saw his side skewered by the frog's other arm. Slowly, the numbness gave way to a searing pain. He saw the next attack coming with his massive compound eyes, but was unable to maneuver out of the way thanks to the narrow burrow. Instead, he moved his singular horn in the way to block. As the large frog drew back its arms, he thrust his labium like a spear. He wasn't quite fast enough to spear the frog's skull as he'd intended, it almost cleared the attack with a powerful jump, but he did manage to spear its lower abdomen. If they were alive, the frog would be missing its intestines.

The frog wailed in pain, but Cameron ignored its squealing in favor of a desperate gamble. He used all six legs to push himself from the burrow with all his strength. At the same time, he pulled the frog towards him with as much force as he could manage, ramming the horn on top of his head into the frog's chest cavity. The long horn tapered through its lung and into its spine, killing it in one swift blow.

'Note to self, if I don't think I can kill in one hit, don't bother. This body isn't equipped for head on fights.' He panted as he dragged the dead frog into the burrow and began to consume it. This time, he decided not to leave out another bait. He could use the rest.

X

Roughly two months later, by his probably inaccurate estimate, he had discovered several new abilities. For one, he could see different spectrums. Truthfully, he was surprised he didn't get the skill sooner. After all, many insects saw the world differently and infrared and ultraviolet were not out of the question. Yes, he could see body heat. It helped immensely to locate prey and avoid predators.

If he were completely honest, he needed his superb eyesight to run and hide more often than to hunt and kill. Sometime after killing the frog, he outgrew the tiny burrow and was forced to relocate or grow too fat and trap himself between the quartz tree's roots. While on the hunt for another dig site, he saw the swooping shadow of a hawk shaped hollow. He had managed to duck thanks to the shimmering heat that visibly followed the predator. When it circled around, he rolled on his back, avoiding its claws by hair's breadth. From on his back, he threw his labium forward, piercing the hawk with his two pronged mouth. He had eaten well that day and decided his new burrow should be at the base of a larger tree.

The second ability he obtained was upon consuming a hollow that reminded him of a chameleon. He could, with some difficulty, hide in plain sight. 'If I remember right, one hollow Ichigo fought could make itself invisible.' He had no idea if the type of hollow he ate affected his abilities' development, but he didn't much care either. One of the espada could obtain even a shinigami's powers, so he figured it wasn't too far of a stretch for him. He had a hypothesis about that. Eating a lion wouldn't get him a bushy mane, but because he already had an affinity towards hiding and ambush, the chameleon's natural affinity helped for his own stealth capabilities to manifest.

To his disappointment, he later found that it was not true invisibility; rather, it was a type of enhanced camouflage. Simply put, he couldn't move with it on. He compared it to wearing a coat you had to constantly hold together. It took him a second or two to "put on" the coat and moving disrupted his focus enough that it became impossible to maintain. It was also a rather large drain on his reiryoku reserves.

The final ability he gained in tandem with the second. He figured if he could instinctively create a cloak to bend light, he should in turn be able to condense that reiryoku inwards. So, he eventually learned to suppress his budding power to such a degree that only the most sensitive hollow would notice his presence. Slowly, the hollow called Cameron's bid for survival began.

 **Author's Note**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.**

 **Pat reon Sorre**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Humanity**

Roughly three months by his estimate, he had grown to be about twice the height of a human being at the shoulder and almost four times as long. His size had made it almost impossible to hide under a tree, though a few of those monstrosities were big enough. Thankfully, his ability to "cloak" had increased proportionately. The most important thing he learned was to maintain his cloak while simultaneously suppressing his reiryoku. Basically, he likened it to weaving a shell around himself that caught any excess reiatsu and fed it back into his body while bending the light, preventing those nearby from detecting him by his reiatsu.

With an increase in size, he was able to hunt larger prey. He wasn't quite willing to test himself against the larger hollows in a direct confrontation, but if he could get a clean shot, he happily took it. His hunting methods changed slightly as well. Now, he simply fent dissatisfied staying in one place for long. Mobility became both a matter of personal interest as well as security. First, not enough prey-sized hollows wandered by. He had little choice but to hunt more proactively if he wanted to eat. Second, he was no longer small enough to go entirely unnoticed. Sure, he could remain practically invisible, but that did not mean the sudden drop in lower reiatsu hollows in an area went ignored. It was not uncommon for medium powered hollows to band up and follow a stronger hollow. These roving gangs had no formal names, but they did monitor their "hunting grounds" like wolves. He had to keep moving in order to keep his "footprint" as small as possible.

Eventually, throughout his wanderings, he labeled four "packs" that he referred to by the color of their leaders. There were Red, Blue, Gray, and Brown packs. He had no interest in learning their names, predominantly because he would likely be seen as weak and a liability. He could not fight directly so he wouldn't be much use in acquiring more territory; therefore, he'd probably be eaten. Rather than try to gain one of the gangs' favor, he chose to skip between their territories.

At the moment, he was in Red's domain. He was the smallest of them, an ocelot-like hollow with a chip on his shoulder. Red's small size bellied the large amount of reiatsu he had and his control was impressive for a base form hollow. Not to mention, the miniature Grimmjow wannabe was very fast. His territory was the largest of the four gangs Cameron was familiar with through no other virtue than that he could cover more ground as the fastest of the four leaders. Red's territory was a sprawling forest, like the rest, but he claimed the area with fewer quartz trees intentionally in order to make use of his speed to the fullest. Cameron was sure he could kill Red in one hit if he got the ambush correct, but the consequences for failing to finish the fight immediately were too high. Not only was he unsure of beating Red, even if he managed to cripple the ocelot, he would soon have a horde of his minions upon him.

After one last kill, a snake hollow who grew too curious at the bone horn sticking out of the ground, he decided to rise. Sensing no one immediately above him, Cameron shuffled off the dirt he used to cover himself. He was about to leave the area, but froze when he spotted a spike of bone rushing towards him. He managed to swerve his horn and knock it off its trajectory just in time to keep it from skewering the back of his neck. Not for the first time, he thanked the powers that be for perfect spherical vision.

"Heh, I was sure you wouldn't be able to dodge," came the mocking voice. The hollow he called Red stepped from behind a tree. "You're not as good at sensing as you are at hiding, aren't you?" He gave his tail a casual flick and a barbed spike dug into the quartz. "Normally, I wouldn't care about some bug, but I don't appreciate you stealing my game."

"Uhh… I could just move on to somewhere else?" Cameron tried.

The ocelot smirked. It was half his size, but the weight of the reiatsu Red was giving off made him wary. "You could, but how would I know if you come back? To be honest, I found out someone's been in my territory a while ago, but I could never quite prove it until now. No, if I let you go, there's no guarantee you won't hold a grudge and here, grudges are dangerous. Today's prey can be tomorrow's predator after all." He snickered and gave a low whistle as two more hollows, another cat and something vaguely reminiscent of a sloth, dropped to his side.

'Think, Cameron,' he scolded himself, 'You should have been more careful, but fuck that. How do you get out of this?' "How about I join you then? We both know I can't take you in a direct fight so you can keep an eye on me."

"Nah, too much work. Besides, I'm more the aggressive type. I don't like waiting for my prey to come to me." He began walking lazily towards him, his two flunkies stepping around to surround him.

"I'm good at ambushing. You're good at herding. You could herd one of the other bosses to me and I could cripple them for you," he tried again.

This time, the ocelot stopped; it wasn't everyday a viable way to gain more land, and therefore more food, cropped up. "You'd do that?"

Cameron thanked god his mask covered his face and tried to look as unthreatening as possible. Meanwhile, he raised his reiatsu suppression as high as it could go. "I don't see why not. I eat well. You eat well. We both win, right?"

Red inclined his head in acknowledgement. A hollow with suppressed reiatsu was a hollow with a weakened defense, a sign of submission. "That's true, but there's one problem. I can tell, you're a fairly new hollow. Did you know I used to be a part of a larger pack? A three-headed wolf led us, Cerberus, we called him. He was big and fast and managed to cover twice the territory I have now."

"What happened, boss?" One of the others, the sloth, asked.

"He died. He got killed by one of the adjuchas that haven't gone up yet for whatever reason. I barely survived, but you know why he died? The adjuchas wouldn't really gain anything from eating a base level hollow, but he did anyway, just in case Cerberus grew up too big and too strong. Nope, sorry kid, conquering territory as a base hollow isn't such a good idea. I'm happy with what I've got."

Cameron tensed. He knew what was coming. He had been balling up his reiryoku as much as he could in anticipation. He sent it out beneath his feet and reached for the instinctive knowledge all hollows have: the garganta. Red sprang forward with unbelievable speed and swung his tail like a barbed whip, but only managed to land a glancing blow that Cameron once again guarded with his horn. "I promise to stay out of your territory!" he called as he allowed himself to fall into the abyss.

X

'So this is the human world,' he thought to himself as he strolled along the bottom of the sea. He hadn't had a destination in mind, so landed randomly and as any cartographer could tell you, the world was wet, very wet. He had fallen into what could only be the ocean. He was fine with this. No humans meant no shinigami. There would be very little reason to patrol an ocean after all. On the off chance that a boat sank, it would make more sense to send a shinigami rather than have one stationed permanently on every major shipping lane across the world. So, this meant he had ample time to gain better control of his reiatsu while wandering the ocean floor undisturbed. He remembered from high school geology that the ocean floor could be divided into two sections: the continental shelf and the much deeper "true" ocean. He figured all he had to do was move in a single direction until he met a cliff.

When he finally surfaced, he was greeted by a busy port and if he wasn't dead already, the large galleon that ran him over certainly would have done the trick. He emerged onto a wide bay, using his six limbs to paddle himself ashore. As soon as he touched ground, he double checked to make sure he wasn't as solid as he could be. 'Wouldn't want to break someone accidentally.' He overheard a man yelling from the ship that they had reached Cape Town. 'Cape Town, huh… South Africa… I think? Wow, I'm far from Karakura. No matter, this will be my home, for now.' He wandered the port city with a sense of awe. 'I'm definitely in the past… If I remember right, Cape Town was first established by Europeans as a trading post during the race for Indian spices. It's considerably larger than a trading post, so it must be a few hundred years later… The galleon wasn't steam powered, so that means Britain hasn't gotten down to the Industrial Revolution yet… Either that, or steam power hasn't spread to sea travel or to other countries outside of the UK. I guess around early to mid 1700s?'

Cameron would have free reign over the future capital of South Africa for a month before he spotted the resident shinigami patrol. They were a duo, which told him that neither were seated officers; or, they weren't very high up regardless. If they held seats and were strong enough to have found their first release, then they would be strong enough to claim a city on their own. Besides, their reiatsu were nothing special. Boy and Girl, he decided to call them. It wasn't as though he could ask. 'Well, I could, but I doubt they'd tell me their names…' For the most part, he tried his best to stay out of their way while keeping his own reiatsu suppressed to the maximum. Hollows and shinigami may be mortal enemies, but he wasn't going to go out of his way to hunt them without good cause. By the end of the week, he had a firm grasp of their patrol routes.

He decided that the best way to get stronger without alerting the shinigami duo would be to ambush other hollows. For the next six years, Cape Town would enter a period of unprecedented spiritual calm. Not only did it have two shinigami, if lower on the power totem pole, it also had a talented ambush predator cutting down the number of hollows.

His first major interaction with humans came in the form of a young, African girl of about fourteen years old. Truth be told, he was not paying attention and his reiatsu wasn't as suppressed as it could have been. Whether it was due to his instincts as a dragonfly nymph or some subconscious preference for water, Cameron liked to ambush hollows along the river. Besides, more humans lived near fresh water and a larger population density in turn meant more chance of hollows forming in the area. He stepped out of the forest and onto the river bank, but froze as a shrill scream filled the air. The sound of breaking clay rang out as the girl dropped the pot she had been carrying to the river.

"Shit!" he swore before reining in his reiatsu and dashing into the forest. 'Someone saw me. Some kid saw me. How? Spiritually aware? It makes sense in a way; if the dead can walk among the living, then there has to be some truth to the stories of witch doctors and mediums.'

X

Back on the riverbank, Anathi sank to her trembling knees. She had seen a demon! 'Ancestors help me,' she prayed. She had always felt as though she was being watched. Ever since her grandfather passed, she had been able see shimmers in the air and hear whispers that seemed to call to her from everywhere and nowhere. Once, she could have sworn she saw two individuals darting atop the roofs of houses in town. The man and woman wore clothing as black as the night with sashes whiter than any fabric she had ever seen. Their speed and and dexterity had immediately warned her of their inhuman status.

She had tried telling her family, but they had brushed her aside. "Your name means "they are with us," but that is a figure of speech, child. If spirits exist, they are content to go about their own affairs. Now come eat before your food gets cold," her mother would always say.

This however, this was the first time she had seen such a monster. Of course, the Xhosa had plenty of tales of demons lurking in the forest, but she had always put them aside as little more than stories to scare children into behaving. Now… now she wasn't sure. Surely, if the spirits of her ancestors could run around the buildings in cloaks of night, demons could lurk in forests too… right?

X

Anathi let out a breath she didn't know she was holding as she entered her wooden hut. Ever since her encounter with the demon six weeks ago, she had been jumping at shadows. She would walk a little faster through the wooded paths and the once cool and inviting river had become something that inspires only trepidation in her.

Her relief was short lived. Inside her small hut, a man held her mother by the hair as another stabbed her little brother with a knife. She noted in her detached state that the blade was of iron, not stone or bone and had a clean, angular handle and grip. 'Pale-man make.' Then, reality caught up to her and her breath hitched in her throat as her brother cried out in pain. "Run," her mother croaked out even as the first man slid his dagger across her throat.

"Shit, get her!" she heard as she fled for her life. Whether by a subconscious unwillingness to see her family's blood spilled or by some stroke of luck, Anathi could remember the two men clearly. They were both dark skinned, but the dagger showed that they had allied with the pale-men. Although the Xhosa tribes traded with them, the so called Portuguese sailors were kept at an arm's length.

'Those men weren't Xhosa,' she thought. Xhosa men wore bangles and beads across their necks and ankles. Those men did not. 'Who were they?' She could hear the twigs break and birds fall silent as the men raced after her and redoubled her efforts. 'Why?' she wondered. 'The pale-men have no reason to hunt the Xhosa… not since grandmother's time…' she thought desperately.

Her lungs burned like they were filled with desert sand and her long legs threatened to buckle with each step. She dashed through the woods hoping the foliage would mask her location, but the approaching shouts told her otherwise. Small cuts and bruises littered her arms but they went ignored in her haste to get away. Finally, her legs gave out and the young girl skid across the dirt. The two men jeered as they caught up to her, but fell silent when they realized their target wasn't even paying her any attention.

There, before Anathi, stood the two pale ones with cloaks like midnight. They were fighting a large ape, as tall as the trees, wearing a mask of bone. It had rugged growths of bone that punctured through its skin around the elbows and forearms, giving it a disturbing top-heavy appearance. It threw a wild punch that sent the trees rustling with the wind, but neither Anathi nor her assailants felt it. She had only a moment to wonder at the strangeness of it all before the woman in black slashed down with her sword, severing its arm in one mighty swing.

The creature roared, making her wince at the noise, but the two men did not react. Instead, the taller one, her mother's killer, grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the side. "Don't you ignore us, bitch!" he shouted. His foot thrust forward in a vicious kick and she felt more than heard the muffled snap of a broken rib, but the pain that registered was a distant ache.

No, her eyes were drawn to the man in black that blocked a savage punch from the demonic ape. 'No sword should be so sturdy,' she thought as he gave a martial shout and threw the beast's arm to the side, giving his partner just enough time to cut deeply into it again. This time, crimson blood gushed out of a wound that stretched from its shoulder to the opposite hip.

""Nice hit, Manami," the god called to the goddess. What else could they be? They were demon slayers with cloaks of midnight. They bore swords of incomparable elegance. They moved with the fluid grace that even a leopard could not match. The two sheathed their swords and began walking away.

"Wait," Anathi whispered and reached out an arm. "Take me with you," she wanted to say. "Save me," she wanted to cry out. Instead, she felt one of her assailants stab the arm into the ground, nailing it by the hand. This time, there was no demonic clash to distract her from the pain. This time, she screamed as any adolescent girl would. The scream only invigorated her attackers as they jeered and mocked the girl who begged the air for help.

"Anathi? Who is with you? Are you begging the spirits for help?" they laughed.

"Johan," the woman called Manami spoke to her partner. She paused mid-stride and threw a challenging glare at her partner, daring him to ignore the girl.

He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "You know how this goes, Manami. Us shinigami do not intervene in the affairs of the living. It is not our place."

Anathi reeled in horror as she felt her dirty clothing tear under their grasping hands. "Please," she screamed out.

"They're about to rape her!" Manami turned, sword halfway drawn, but Johan grabbed her hand.

"She'll forget all of this when we konso her anyway." He sighed again at his partner's mutinous expression. "We can't kill those scum, even if we wanted to. You know what the captain would do to us if we take a life that isn't due." If anything, Manami's expression grew even more frigid.

She brushed off his hand and stalked forward. "Girl, I don't know your name. I dearly wish I could help you, but I cannot. This is all I can do for you, child. By the Soul King, please, do not resent me." So saying, she brought her sword down on the girl. Zanpakuto, _soul cutter_ , it was called. And so, the soul it would cut.

Anathi stared in horror, the sword seemingly descending in slow motion, its graceful arc aimed straight between her eyes. Just before it slashed into her skin, something beyond human description knocked the woman away. Not for the first time that day, her breath caught in her throat. She had seen this demon before. Large, twice as tall as herself and several times that in length, the massive creature stopped the sword with what looked like a blade of bone, a massive horn as tall as a man that grew from its head. Its six legs gripped the earth with such force that the ground began to give way.

"That's quite enough," it rasped. Its voice was unlike anything Anathi had ever heard before. "This is the problem with you shinigami," it drawled, "You're so eager to obey the law that you forget why the law exists. You want to preserve the balance of souls? You want to protect mortals? Then start by punishing the sinner, not the victim." Without even looking, one of its back legs swung in a lazy arc, its sickle-like barbs disemboweling the would be rapist before he could go any further. The demon flicked its massive lower jaw in what looked like a casual wave, sending the female shinigami skidding back to avoid its menacing tusks. "Girl, you can see me, can't you?" he growled, his voice had a grating echo, like two layers of tree bark rubbing together with each syllable. He ignored the second living male who was panicking over his partner's death at invisible hands. Keeping an eye on the two shinigami, he moved one leg to pull the knife nailing her hand to the earth as gently as he could. "You shinigami may be bound by laws, but us hollows have no such obligation."

The two black-clad swordsmen took cautious steps back, falling into well-practiced stances. "An intelligent hollow?" Johan muttered.

"Girl, what is your name?" Cameron asked.

"A-Anathi," she stammered as she cradled her wounded hand.

He crouched over her protectively as another leg lashed out, spearing her second assailant to the ground. The sound of snapping ribs filled the air. He gasped, the chitinous foot pressing down on him not even giving him the luxury of screaming. 'Good, she can still speak,' he thought, 'She's not too panicked then.' "Anathi, go. Next time, do not rely on the shinigami until you are dead. Go and live a long life. And when you pass, these two will guide you on your journey to the spirit world. And if you ever meet another like me, don't assume we're all friendly. I'm kind of the exception," he said drily.

"W-What are you?" the one called Manami asked. Cameron looked her over. She was attractive enough, if with a slightly narrow face. She appeared stereotypically Japanese, with hair falling in a short princess cut. Her partner was slightly darker skinned, but had lighter brown hair that indicated some European heritage.

'Portuguese?' he thought, 'Maybe he has some North African blood in him. Or maybe he was one of those who became shinigami after dying as a trader. That would explain why he is stationed here.' "Me?" he answered, "I'm a hollow. What do I look like? I'm an insect. I'm also quite intelligent and unwilling to kill innocents. Tell me, how has your patrol been these past years?"

Realization struck Johan a minute later. "You, you're the one that's been removing hollows!"

"Correct. A hollow grows more powerful by consuming spirits. A hollow is therefore attracted to strong souls, like Anathi over there. But really, the stronger hollows don't gain a whole lot by eating one soul, unless that soul is extraordinarily strong even by spiritually aware standards. And obviously, trying to take souls from Soul Society or poaching shinigami is a very bad idea. Instead, we make up for that with sheer quantity. After all, a hollow is comprised of all the souls it has eaten." Here, Cameron gave them a bloodthirsty grin, his smile made all the more grotesque by his extended lower jaw. "I figured, instead of competing in Hueco Mundo, It'd be better for me to enter the living world and hunt the newly minted hollows. What will you do now that you know you have been receiving aid from a hollow? Will you still strike me down knowing I am a hunter of other hollows? If I'm being honest, I would like for us to leave each other be…"

The two shinigami glanced at one another and came to a silent understanding. "If you're this intelligent now, you'll only grow stronger. It's only a matter of time before you're strong enough to hunt shinigami," Johan said. "As an officer of the Eighth Division, it is my job to stop you! Dance! Chicote!" His reiatsu spiked and Cameron was forced to scoop the girl in his claws before jumping away.

"Run, girl! You can't survive that much pressure!" He said, shoving her into the woods. The man's blade had turned into a whip reminiscent of thorny vines. "No chance at negotiation, huh. That's as I suspected." Once he saw that the girl had fled into the woods, he gave the two a mocking bow. "Well, it's been a blast, but I think I've overstayed my welcome. Next time, I hope you show some appreciation for aid freely given." Saying so, he created a garganta beneath his feet and dropped into the abyss, just as he had done with Red seven years ago.

 **Author's Note**

 **In South Africa, the Xhosa is one of the two largest ethnic groups (that aren't "white"). Xhosa is the name of the ethnic group, the language, and the first ancestor who was worshiped as a god. Like many African tribes, they traditionally worshipped their ancestors, though they are now almost entirely Christian. Anathi is one of the most common unisex names in the Xhosa language and means "they are with us." I thought the name was fitting given her spiritual awareness. For her, "they," her ancestors, are very much real.**

 **Chicote is Portuguese for "whip." I figured that not all shinigami had to have zanpakuto named in Japanese. If it's a reflection of the soul, it stands to reason that some are foreign.**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.**

 **Pat reon Sorre**


	4. Chapter 4

**Preface**

 **Hello all, I actually was planning on putting this up on Monday according to schedule, but I was making edits to my other story, Gaming Guardian, and decided that I may as well update this while I'm at it. Don't worry, I'm not going to use this as an excuse to not update on Monday. It just means my update schedule gets moved up two weeks.**

 **Anyway, if you like this story, please check out the others. If you need to get in contact with me, please PM me directly through this site or through my Pat Reon. I read the reviews, but I don't always reply to them.**

 **Best,**

 **Sorre**

 **Chapter 4: Adjuchas**

"Yo, and how are my adorable subordinates doing this evening," came the lazy drawl of the Eighth Division Captain, Shunsui Kyoraku. The man, as usual, was lying on his side with a saucer of clear sake in hand. The rest of the bottle was, predictably, within easy reach. He glanced over through a gap in his straw hat and gave them a friendly wave.

"You could at least pretend to be working, captain," came the irritated groan of their Lieutenant, Lisa Yadomaru. She was a short woman with glasses, somewhat plain, with ash-black hair tied in a ponytail. She was slaving away at the paperwork her captain was too lazy to do, again.

Beside her, an equally stern woman sat with a pile of her own. Their Third Seat, Nanao Ise, nodded and threw a reproachful glare towards the pink-clad captain. Unfortunately, as a recently promoted third seat, she wasn't quite brave enough to nag her captain into motion. She was, hower, content to take out her irritation on the two lower ranked officers. "Report, 17th Seat Johan, 19th Seat Manami. You are early; why did you see fit to abandon your posts?" she barked. Someone had to take their job seriously after all.

The two junior officers knelt. "Ma'am, as ordered, we were on a year long patrol mission to the human world, a city known as Cape Town," Johan began. "There, we noticed something strange roughly four months ago. The town is one the largest city on the continent as the humans use it as a trading post. Due to the more… aggressive methods employed by European traders, there is no shortage of negative emotion and regret. As a result, there were many hollows."

"Were?" their lieutenant asked. Nearby, even their captain put down his drink, his eyes taking on a clarity that was typically present only before the Captain Commander. The last time hollows went missing en masse, they had a war against the Quincy. Peace was fine, but any form of abnormality warranted caution to the highest degree.

"Yes, ma'am," Manami continued where her partner left off. "Roughly four months ago, we were chatting and noticed an unusual absence of hollows. Looking back, the phenomenon seems to have begun as far back as five or six months previously. Then, a week ago, we found the cause: an intelligent hollow that preys on other hollows."

Shunsui's reiatsu filled the air, bringing the two weakest officers to the ground. "Ah, crap, sorry about that, you two," he apologized. "I forget myself sometimes. I could've sworn you said an intelligent hollow was hunting other hollows for a sec."

"T-that's right, sir," Johan stuttered out and collapsed as the agitated captain's power filled the room again.

A sandal struck the man's cheek and bounced back into Lisa's hand. She caught it with expert ease, the proof of her experience at handling her eccentric superior. "Chill out, captain. Scaring the rookies isn't going to make this any better," she said. "Now, Johan, tell me everything."

And so, they did. They spoke about how they saw two men about to rape a girl. They told them how the girl was spiritually aware and how Manami wanted to give her a quick death rather than allow her to suffer such an experience. They talked about how a hollow, some sort of insect, intervened and killed the two assailants while leaving the girl alive, how the hollow blocked Manami's sword and made sure the human was safe before retreating through a garganta.

Shunsui sat up and massaged the bridge of his nose, clearly nursing a headache. "And as he left, you lost a philosophical debate… to a hollow? And after ensuring that he was not returning, you came here as soon as you could?"

"Y-yes, and," Manami began but was cut off a moment later.

"I wouldn't say he's wrong though," Shunsui sighed. "Alright, listen up. Everything you've said today is now top-secret. I'll take this up with Yama-ji and see what he thinks of it. There will likely be a special bounty placed on the hollow. I want you to write up a report on it with everything you can remember."

Two rapid nods later, the officers were dismissed and Lisa and Nanao were trying to go back to their paperwork, with little success. Their captain took a single sip of his sake before sighing again and tossing the cup aside. "Captain," Lisa said, "what do you make of the hollow?"

"Honestly, I have no idea. Could it be possible to cooperate with some of the smarter hollow?"

Lisa gave an unladylike snort. "With all due respect, captain, it was probably just looking for the easiest way to eat without drawing attention. I wouldn't trust a hollow as far as I could throw one."

X

Cameron rammed his head into a quartz tree for the twelfth time. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," he muttered, "You just had to reveal yourself. She would've forgotten about it all as soon as she arrived in Soul Society and you just had to play the damn hero." Truth be told, he wasn't afraid of Soul Society's response, they weren't going to attack Hueco Mundo just for him after all, even if they did somehow make a garganta of their own. No, he was afraid the incident would reach the ears of the captains, and Aizen by extension. He'd have to evolve as quickly as he could and once he made adjuchas, he could hopefully lay low.

X

Anathi found herself desperately running for her life. If someone were to point out the similarities between this event and the one five years prior, she'd scowl and stab them. She couldn't help but wish that the spirits of her ancestors would come help her again though. Demon or not, monster or not, it had helped her freely when the pale one would only grant her a quick death.

'But if you died, you wouldn't be going through this,' a pessimistic voice sniped in her mind. Now, she found herself running for her life, not from rapists and murderers, but from slavers, pale men that wanted to take her across the sea into lands unknown. She was forced to a rapid stop as more men came out from behind the trees. "You're quite famous around here, you know. Anathi the Seer, they call you. They say you can speak to the dead and see the future," one of the slavers said with a jeer. His face would have been handsome if not for the ugly scar on his lip. He spat at the ground between her feet. "You're supposed to be wise and beautiful, some sort of fortune teller, the Darling of the Desert, they call you. Bullshit," he spat again. This time, she saw it was some sort of plant that darkened his teeth a putrid yellow. "All you fucking heathens are good for is picking cotton."

"No, I do not see the future, pale one. If I did, perhaps I would have chosen to die at her blade," she said bitterly. "I simply see the past more clearly than the rest."

The men bound her hands with rope that chafed and dragged her like a dog to the ocean. There, she was forced to board a ship with two hundred other slaves. Some of them, she could remember had sought her advice. One had even asked her to bless his newborn daughter that he might grow up to be as beautiful and wise as her. With a heavy heart filled with regret, she sailed for the land that would be called Brazil.

X

It had been thirty years since he had been forced to withdraw to Hueco Mundo. Sometimes, he still wondered what became of that little girl, the one who could see spirits, the one who showed him that there was a bit of humanity still inside. Then, he would be forced into yet another life or death battle and thoughts of the girl would flee his mind. The inattentive hollow was a dead hollow and Cameron Gold had in intention of dying so soon. Today, or tonight, it was hard to tell in Menos Forest, he was back where it all began: Red's territory.

He had grown extremely proficient at reiatsu manipulation, to the point where he could cloak while moving forward. He couldn't move very quickly while doing it, but he could move. It also took him only a split second to stray from the visual spectrum. The miniature wings that covered his hollow hole on his back, the same that would allow a dragonfly to soar, had grown larger. If that wasn't proof of his impending evolution, he didn't know what was.

He didn't really know what made him return to Red's territory. He had been extremely cautious after the last incident, but something drew him here. He wanted Red to be his final kill as a base hollow. Perhaps he was a sucker for the dramatic. Perhaps he wanted revenge for his temporary exile into the human world. Perhaps he was just a poetic idiot. He didn't know, but it didn't really matter. What he did know was that Red would be coming by this way in a few minutes, as he always did when running from one end of his territory to another.

Sure enough, the ocelot-like hollow with a spiked tail dashed through the trees. With a mighty jump, Cameron lept from his hiding place just below his prey and let loose his spear-tipped jaw. It sank into Red's stomach with a dull thud. Cameron drew it in and fell with Red pinned below him with his six arms.

"Y-you!" Red gasped as he struggled to escape. Cameron only chuckled and held on tighter. He twisted his labium and soaked in the pained groan of his opponent.

"Me," he shrugged, "Don't take this personally, Red, I just want to evolve like you."

"You were weaker than me," he coughed, "H-how are you stronger?"

Cameron hummed. "Well, I'm an ambush predator, as you well know. I also wasn't that much weaker than you, only weak enough that fighting you directly would be a bad idea. Besides, you take reiatsu to be more important than it really is," he said. The clearing was filled with a powerful pressure as Cameron unleashed his hold on his reiryoku. "See, it's possible for someone to permanently seal their own power, especially if that someone excels at ambush hunting. Then, it won't show up as reiatsu. After all, reiatsu is only externally manifested reishi. You told me I wasn't as good at sensing others as I was at hiding, and you were right. But as it turns out, you're not that great at sensing either.

"You know what else? The reason I'm stronger now isn't because I'm special, it's because you're weak. You've always been afraid, Red. I remember what you told me about the hollow called Cerberus. You've always been too afraid to accept the power already in your grasp, but I'm not. I've been testing myself through one battle after another and getting stronger. All the while, you've done nothing but run from one end of your territory to the next, playing at being a king when really, you're just too weak that no one wants to bother killing you."

Red gave a berserk roar. He knew he was dead, there was no way having twin daggers in your chest cavity wasn't fatal, especially not for a hollow that had no real regeneration ability. No, there was no way he'd survive, but he wouldn't let his death be meaningless. He mustered all the strength he had and lashed his tail at his killer's throat. He was rewarded with a dull squelch as the spike impaled itself into a hastily raised leg.

"Fuck!" Cameron swore as he brought another leg down on Red's tail, spearing it into the earth with his claws. He pulled out his mandibles and speared them through Red's mask, killing him instantly. 'You're a fucking idiot, Cameron!' he berated himself even as he began to consume his last meal. 'You had him! You could have killed him, but noooo. You had to monologue like a third rate Bond villain!'

Even as he ate, his armored plates thickened and he gained mass disproportionate with the food he was consuming. Cameron lost himself to the frenzy and when he came to, he found he was now about a third of the height of the tallest trees. That is, he was a third of the height of the ceiling of Menos Forest. He frowned behind his mask. 'Other gillian were bigger,' Cameron thought, 'a lot bigger.'

He had met some gillian in Menos forest. He did not like them much. Truth be told, they were "higher beings" only in that they had much greater reserves of reiryoku. Most were dumb and slow. He would have tried to eat one, but that would inevitably gain the fury of the entire mob and he wasn't about to risk a rain of cero if he could help it. He wasn't sure what to think. Unlike other gillian, he was only half their size.

Over the course of two months, he quickly found the limits of his abilities. Just as he was half their size, he was twice as fast. He also found that he retained many of the abilities he had as a base hollow. The only thing that didn't translate over was the perfect spherical vision. Instead, his mask was more normal and his eyes only saw through the front, like everyone else. It was rather disorienting, he had grown to appreciate his compound eyes and was somewhat sad to see them go. His mask was similar to most gillian in that it reminded him of a knock off pinocchio, but unlike others, he had clear mandibles for a mouth rather than lips.

For better or worse, he also found that the signature skill of all hollow, the cero, came far easier to him than it did for most gillian. Most took several seconds to charge, but he managed to fire one off every two seconds or so. That part of the forest remained a wasteland as a result of his testing.

X

"Let's see," he muttered to himself. He had begun testing out his cero as soon as he found a relatively abandoned stretch of forest. He started by killing every base hollow he could and made sure there weren't any adjuchas nearby that might take an interest in him. Like every other gillian, the cero was more an exercise in instinctive awareness than it was any refined skill. He wanted destruction and something inside him already knew how. He drew upon the energy within himself and, about ten seconds later, he had a crimson orb just before his mask. With a mental flick, the cero fired and decimated a large quartz tree. "How do I go about making this faster?"

He tried a number of ways to make it charge more quickly. He tried to cancel the charge half way, but as expected, the blast was proportionately weaker and just wouldn't be very useful against anything but base hollows. He tried a few meditation techniques he'd heard about, but immediately felt silly once he realized that most involved breathing and as a spirit, he didn't need to breathe in the first place.

"Think, Cameron, there's got to be a better way than this. What is a cero? It's Spanish for "zero." Yes, but what is it? It's a beam of negative energy so why is it called "cero?" Was Kubo an idiot? Yes, he probably just thought it sounded cool. ARGGGGHHHHH!" he yelled in frustration. "How am I supposed to survive the clusterfuck that is Aizen if I can't even have a reliable laser?"

Then, he promptly ran his head into another tree, denting the quartz. "Of course! I'm such a fucking idiot! You make lasers more powerful by concentrating them on one point. A laser by definition is a concentrated beam of light!" Sure, a cero wasn't light, but the principle was the same, right? Right.

That was how he got to where he was. Instead of charging the cero fully, he used his superior control gained from years of cloaking to compress it to ridiculous levels. By size alone, the beam's radius would only be about two or three feet wide, but that beam could cut through several of the thickest quartz trees in the forest. He then, on a whim, tried to draw in reiryoku directly from the air. He knew Kubo portrayed it as a strictly Quincy skill, but he had to try. The thought of developing a spiritual equivalent to senjutsu was too good to pass up. In the end, he couldn't quite make it happen. What he did manage was a brief infusion of air into his cero, creating something resembling a slipstream using the reiryoku particles already in the air. He wasn't absorbing them into himself. Instead, he was compacting them along with his own reiryoku to make his cero "heavier."

X

Twelve years after becoming a gillian, Cameron finally ascended to an adjuchas. The process was rather anticlimactic if he were being honest. He'd look back on his time as a gillian with surprising fondness. His small size, mobile cloaking, and relatively high agility made him the perfect predator, too insignificant to be noticed by stronger adjuchas and too talented to fall prey to the more average dangers of Menos Forest. He occupied that sweet spot between anonymity and apex predator and he loved it. One of his favorite tactics was to cloak, approach a herd of gillian, then hide. He'd then shoot his focused cero through a few gillian and immediately cloak again, sparking a feeding frenzy that would inevitably result in a handful of injured, but well-fed gillian. He would then strike down the leftovers, the best-fed, choicest morsels for himself.

He became an adjuchas in much the same manner. Normally, the gap between the different evolutionary stages of hollows was so wide that it was virtually impossible for a lesser hollow to feed on a greater hollow. An adjuchas, even a weak one, was better in every way. It was stronger, faster, and had larger reiryoku reserves as a result of the exponential increase in souls needed for ascension. Most important of all, an adjuchas had far more experience. Simply the fact that it was an adjuchas was proof that whatever its survival strategy, it was effective.

The only way to beat one was to take it off guard and the best way to do that was to attack while it was eating. So, that what he did. Cameron orchestrated the largest gathering of gillian he could make by creating a feast for lesser hollows. Effectively, by forcing so many base hollows to enter a feeding frenzy, he caused one or two to evolve. By injuring those and letting them cry out, he caused a larger feeding frenzy of gillian. Eventually, he drew in an adjuchas that wanted a quick snack. As it went for the final kill, Cameron charged as concentrated a cero as he could and punched a football sized hole through its mask. Adjuchas or not, it wasn't going to recover from that. He had learned his lesson from Red. He would not give a single opportunity for retaliation. There was no boasting. There was no showboating. As much as he wanted to indulge in a plan well executed, he knew better now.

 **Author's Note**

 **No, I'm not done with Anathi. Yes, the Commander now knows about Cameron, though only as a hollow of interest. Yes, Aizen now knows about him, though he isn't considered strong enough to warrant interest, especially not when a certain time manipulating vasto lorde is so much stronger.**

 **As for his unique cero, yes, I know how impossible it is for anything other than a Quincy to directly manipulate reiryoku in the air. Yes, it's going to be something of a unique skill of his. Bear with me because I do have a plan for this.**

 **So, here's the timeline:**

 **\- Anathi is saved by Cameron sometime in the early 1700s.  
\- One week after the incident, Manami and Johan report to Shunsui, creating a dossier on the "intelligent hollow."  
\- 5 years later, Anathi is sold as a slave.  
\- 30 years after that (35 since the incident), Cameron kills Red and becomes a gillian.  
\- 12 years after becoming a gillian, he becomes an adjuchas.**

 **Next chapter will pick up 47 years after the end of chapter 2.**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.**

 **Pat reon Sorre**


	5. Chapter 5

**Preface**

 **This chapter is going to be a little weird, but I just thought it was funny. Anyway, happy Monday everyone!**

 **Chapter 5: Penguin**

Cameron's adjuchas for was as he first guessed all those years ago: a dragonfly. He regained his hemispherical eyes that allowed him to see in all directions with perfect clarity. He also regained the spear-like horn that jutted out of his mask. This time, it was serrated along the bottom and top edges. His body shrank. He wasn't entirely certain, but he would guess that his head and torso were actually even smaller than in his base form. Unlike his base form, his body was now a dusky navy blue, all the better to blend into the night sky. Most of his profile was taken up by his four massive wings and tail. Just like a dragonfly in the human world, his wings were long, reaching from just by his hollow hole all the way down to the tip of his tail when folded. They were a clear, gossamer color and cast rainbows along the forest floor if he didn't keep his cloaking technique active. He was happy to find that like some dragonflies, his tail was also prehensile. Its bottom end held two spikes that curved inward like a pincer.

The most noticeable difference was not his appearance however. The gap in power between an adjuchas and a gillian was massive and staring at that gulf from the other side made him wonder how he could have ever been so weak. His reiryoku had shot up exponentially, filling his compact form with enough power to make him feel invincible. An adjuchas had more reiryoku to spend, but was considerably smaller than a gillian. It was the equivalent of comparing a gas to a solid. The difference in "density" of the spirit was something that translated to an increase in strength, speed, perception, reflex, and every other measurable metric.

"WOOOOO!" Unable to contain his excitement, he let out a victorious shout. He knew of course, that this would be the beginning of a long, hard road to stopping Aizen. As he was, he wouldn't even warrant the slightest attention from the man, but he wouldn't be idle. By his reckoning, he was still in the mid to late 18th century. That meant he had almost 250 years before canon. Hopefully, that would be plenty of time to become a vasto lorde and develop his own power.

First things first, he decided to get used to his body more slowly. "Man, I forgot just how good it was to have omnidirectional vision." It was a bit strange to be crawling on six legs instead of walking on two, but he got used to the sensation quickly. He spread out his wings and tried to flap them. They worked as expected, but he found he couldn't get off the ground. Or rather, he couldn't flap them properly because his wings were too large and they would strike the earth, kicking up dust but accomplishing little else.

"Of course, dragonflies take off from high places," he realized. He then used the spurr-like claws on his feet to scale a quartz tree, sending the lower ranked hollows scurrying away. When he was sure he was high enough, but not so high that a fall would hurt, he spread out his wings and dropped down.

Flight drove men insane. Throughout history, there have always been those captivated by the boundless sky. For all their cunning, men were grounded and the phrase, "the sky's the limit," was a testament to their envy. Sometimes, that captivation led to suicidal attempts at mimicking the birds that ruled the skies. Wings with wooden frames and pilfered bird feathers, gliders made of cloth, and even the Hindenburg. Unassisted flight, true flight, was still far beyond the hands of men and now that he had achieved it, Cameron agreed wholly with that fascination. Flight was indescribable. The sensation of soaring through the air was one many dreamed of, and for good reason. Some have claimed that riding in a race car or something similarly fast can mimic the feeling, but Cameron called bullshit. There was nothing that could replicate the feeling of weightlessness, the knowledge that only his wings kept him from crashing against the ground.

Once he managed to avoid becoming a stain on a quartz tree, he began to test himself by flying in different directions, making rapid turns, and flying at odd angles. The beauty of omnidirectional vision was that no matter which direction he was facing, even if he was entirely upside down, he never lost sight of the ground or the horizon. It did wonders for his coordination and he was able to quickly develop different aerial maneuvers that a normal dragonfly wouldn't have the intelligence to attempt.

His experimentations with flight was how he created his first truly unique skill. As a nod to Tite Kubo, he decided to name it in Spanish: La Corriente, The Slipstream or Current. Simply put, it was a wind tunnel with himself as the center. It was hardly larger in diameter than his own wingspan and served to speed him up. His first experiment with air manipulation left him literally nailed to a tree by his horn. He had speared the quartz at speeds that would be dizzying to even other adjuchas and sank his mask's horn into the crystal down to its base. He remained stuck there for a good few hours, a humiliating attempt at supersonic speed. Eventually, he pulled himself out, by firing a weak cero out of his horn and sending him ass over teakettle through the air. He crashed to the ground and promptly killed any hollow that could possibly have seen that embarrassment. He did get better eventually though. What made La Corriente so fun to use was that, with a little planning, he could create the slipstream directly in front of him and use it as a guide to change directions rapidly. The best part was that as long as the slipstream was there in front of him, he wouldn't stop accelerating. He thought of it as the rail to his rollercoaster, one he could change at any time to feed his inner speed demon. Following his immediate passing, the displaced air would create a vacuum that drew in opponents. It wouldn't be crushing high level hierros anytime soon, but it certainly wasn't a comfortable experience. Compared to his base form, his hunting style was as different as night and day and he couldn't be happier.

He also decided to name his focused cero. Aire Cero, or Air Zero, he called it. He refined it by making the beam even narrower, roughly the size of a dinner plate now. He got a kick out of the color swap too. Instead of the red from the standard gillian, his cero now took on the color of his body, the navy blue of midnight. Now, just adding "weight" to the cero by compressing it with air wasn't all he could do. As soon as the hype from flying diminished, he started to toy around with his signature beam. What he remembered was that cero wasn't just light. It took on the characteristic of the hollow, as Harribel's did with her water based cero. "If Harribel can have a water based cero, I can have an air based cero," he told himself. And with a few months of experimentation, in between wild joyrides through the canopy, he got it. His cero differed from all the others in three ways. First, the beam of light was preceded by a drill of air that acted as the tip of the "spear," adding an extra piercing element to its already impressive prowess. Second, it was contained in a current similar to La Corriente, increasing its speed dramatically. Finally, the current encasing it blew inwards as well as forwards in order to keep the beam compressed. It was easy for someone to believe he had dodged the entire blast by a hair, only to get sucked in by the surrounding wind. He had already seen the effect several times when he practiced on base hollows.

Soon enough, he had made a name for himself in Menso Forest as the "Whispering Phantom" because the whispering winds of his La Corriente was all his prey would hear before they were skewered by an invisible spear or ripped apart by a beam of navy blue. For four years since becoming an adjuchas, he would reign as the king of Menos Forest.

X

At 65, Anathi believed she had lived a full life. She wasn't entirely eager to die, who was, but she certainly didn't fear it. No, after being carted off as a slave to this strange land called Brazil, she lived as a nursemaid to some wealthy pale man and his family. Thankfully, she was useful enough at housework and wise enough that her master did not see fit to "recuperate his loss" using her body. By the time she died, she had practically raised her master's children and grandchildren. While she had no children of her own, her kindness and almost supernatural wisdom was legendary.

She had confided in no one about her awareness of the supernatural. How would her master take it if she told him that all he knew of the world of the dead, especially the lies espoused by the priests, were just that, lies? No, she was not stupid and kept her silence.

Over the decades, her abilities had developed. She was able to, with a little focus and skin contact, learn the history of an object. She could learn of how it was made, who made it, who owned it, and what it was used for with startling clarity. Her greatest regret was that she was unable to use her abilities for more than learning to cook quickly.

As she lay on her deathbed, she smiled. She was surrounded by her fellow slaves and even the master's grandchildren had come to bid their "nana" goodbye. As she closed her eyes, her dearest wish was to avoid the pale ones with black cloaks.

X

Four years following his ascension to adjuchas, Cameron soared through the air, the whispering wind the only sign of his passing. He smiled as he snapped up a hollow that resembled a hummingbird mid-flight. "Something as fast as me really shouldn't be able to cloak while moving," he muttered in between chomps. "I'm fucking broken…"

He was cruising leisurely through the air when he saw it. Or at least, leisurely for him, which was still several times faster than most grounded hollows. He had seen many hollows throughout his stint in Hueco Mundo. Most were simian in general profile, with maybe a lizard's tail or bull horns or something to catch his eye. Others were based off of the predators of the human world. He had seen an eagle, lion, ocelot, and even a fox with multiple tails. That last one, he made sure to kill quickly. He didn't know if the legend of the nine-tailed fox was applicable in Hueco Mundo, but he wasn't dumb enough to let it live long enough and find out. By experience alone, he came up with a general hypothesis: The weirder the hollow looked, the more likely it was to be intelligent. Red the Ocelot was a good example. It wasn't always true, but the weird ones were the ones that had unique traits and therefore had better chances of developing their own signature skills.

No, a regular hollow wasn't enough to make him bat an eye anymore. The three legged giraffe hollow with a fish's tail had made sure he was desensitized to the weirdness of souls. What caught his eyes was a group of five hollows surrounding one. The one that was about to be eaten was, weirdly enough, a penguin. That made him do a small double take. It wasn't the weirdest he'd ever seen, but it was something of a novelty nonetheless. The penguin had three claws that curved out of each wing tip and a mask that looked more like it belonged in a masquerade ball than a skull. It was bleeding lightly from numerous small cuts and waddled about in terror. 'No, not it, she,' he thought as he heard her beg.

The voice struck something distant in him, something he thought was buried long ago: compasion. It was oddly familiar and when she offered to act as bait so the group could get more than a quick snack, he made his decision. 'Nothing smart enough to gamble her own life like that should die,' he thought.

X

Anathi had no idea what was going on. As a soul, she had shrunk away from the pale men in black, hiding from their swords until the chain that bound her to the mortal plane rusted away with time. She then underwent the most agonizing experience of her life and when the light cleared, she knew nothing. She waddled from her deathbed and moved into the plantation proper, squawking with each hesitant step. All she knew was that she was hungry.

Eventually, she came across a person, _a thing, a morsel_ , that was chained to a bed. It had tasted delicious. So she fed, over and over again, until she drew the attention of mysterious pale ones who chased her away. She wailed out in desperation and something instinctive clicked within her. As if mirroring her cry, reality spun and tore open, swallowing her up. When she awoke, she was in a forest with no recollection of anything beyond the endless waddling and feeding.

Within months, she knew what she had to do: She had to eat other masked ones like herself. So, she did. She hacked and slashed at the smaller prey. She didn't know why or how, but the more she ate, the clearer her mind became. She remembered but one word, Anathi, and so chose to call herself such. Eventually, she drew the attention of larger masked ones and that was where she was now, surrounded and about to be eaten. She offered to use herself as bait, but no, that wasn't enough. Once more, with all the desperation of a drowning man, she called for help to the uncaring sky.

Suddenly, she felt it, wind. This place, this Menos Forest, had no natural wind. Suddenly, her five assailants stilled as an incomprehensible pressure descended upon them. It was as though the air itself had heard her and come alive on her behalf. Each of them sank to their knees and looked around fervently for what could be causing it.

"G-Gillian?" one asked.

"N-No way, I've seen gillian and this isn't it. This is stronger," another stammered.

The third opened its mouth to speak, but was kept from doing so by a beam of navy blue that cleaved him and the other two in half. The two remaining hollows through fearful glances around the forest. "W-Who's there?"

"C-Come out and fight like a man!" the second shouted. The silence that followed emboldened them for a moment until a haunting laugh filled the air.

"Fight like a man? You do realize we're all hollows, yes?" the voice said. It wasn't particularly deep, but was distinctly masculine. "I don't want to hear of honor from someone who would group up to hunt a penguin."

'A penguin? Is that what I am?' Anathi thought to herself. Although the air was heavy with power, she felt unthreatened. Instead, it covered her, cloaked her in a warmth like a blanket on a cold night.

"W-We were just eating," the first hollow said. "Y-You can have it if you want. We'll just be going. We had no idea this was your hunting ground, we swear!"

"Hmmm, that's one option," the voice said. This time, instead of flowing around them like water, the voice came from a distinct location. Looking up, the three hollows, Anathi and her two living assailants, saw a large dragonfly shimmer into view. He was clutching the quartz tree, hanging vertically from a branch with his tail hooks. She couldn't tell because of the mask, but Anathi would later know that tone as the one he used when he was bored. "Another would be to kill the impudent little shits trespassing in my home. Yes, I like that option better; let's go with that."

He disappeared. Faster than she could see, he was suddenly hovering over her, his six legs curled protectively around her while his horn was skewered through the first hollow's mask. The second tried to run. She felt the disconcerting feeling of weightlessness before she was carried forward by a gust of wind following from her protector's launch. The last hollow didn't have a chance.

He dropped her then and turned to meet her face to face. "What is your name?" he asked.

"I-I don't know, but I like to call myself Anathi," she said. Whatever he wanted, he did not intend for her to die, at least for the moment.

He motioned towards the five corpses. "Well? Aren't you going to eat?"

Anathi was stunned. If there was one law in Menos Forest, it was that eating was sacred. Food did not come by often or without struggle, so eating was an absolute right. Any who violated that right could expect a swift death. "I-I didn't kill them," she stammered.

"No," he agreed, "I did. And I am giving them to you, Anathi. Now eat. I allow it." 'Now where have I heard the name before? It's not like I've met many new people… Oh, she's the human girl I saved a while back… Huh, so she died and became a penguin… weird.' As she ate, he told her all he knew about hollows and Hueco Mundo. Somewhere along the way, before he even knew it, he had decided to adopt her. "My name is Cameron. You may call me Cam."

"Lord Cameron," she chirped. Having eaten five hollows significantly stronger than herself, her reiatsu was far more potent than before.

"Cameron. Drop the lord stuff."

"Lord Cameron," she chirped more resolutely.

'Penguins are social creatures… I don't think African penguins were any different,' he thought drily. "Well, fuck," he sighed. "I wonder if it's possible for me to power-level you into an adjuchas?"

She stared, starstruck at this powerful being that wanted to maker her strong too. "C-Can I also become an adjuchas?"

"If you follow me, then maybe. You're going to have to get stronger… Let's start by losing that stutter."

"Yes!" she shouted.

Cameron sighed and shook his head. "Alright, follow me." He took to the air and stopped a hundred meters away, only to see the hapless penguin waddle along. 'How has she survived until now,' he asked himself as he flew back. Sighing, he grabbed her with his tail and began to fly.

X

Three years flew by and Anathi had grown decently powerful. She was now large enough that he couldn't just grab her with his tail anymore, he needed all six legs. No, he could still grab her with his tail, but she'd complain that it pinched and he'd inevitably dangle her from her legs out of annoyance. He suspected that spiritually aware humans made for stronger hollows and he wasn't mistaken. Her feathers, while soft under his touches, could be hardened to create a layered armor that most base form hollows had trouble breaching.

A favorite strategy of hers was to climb a tree using the claws on her flippers and wait for some poor sap to wander below. She would swan dive with all the grace a real penguin possessed in the water and, beak first, run into the hollow. If that didn't kill immediately, she would slap and rake it to death with her clawed flippers. A penguin was strong enough to break a human's arm with a single slap of its flipper in the human world. That strength carried over and it was Cameron's deepest regret that he had no ocean to show her. When he described the concept of an ocean to her, she wanted to run off into the human world. It took him flying at supersonic speeds while carrying her by her feet for her to swear she would not attempt it, after she finished throwing up of course.

At times, he would have to bail her out of trouble, but those times were becoming fewer and fewer. Eventually, he decided that she was ready to become a gillian. She had gained admirable control over her body and although she wasn't very fast, had the strength to hold her own. For her "graduation gift," Cameron deposited her on a high branch.

She looked down nervously. Below her, two small armies of gillian were locked in battle. Each was led by an adjuchas, one an alligator and another a rhino. Such disputes weren't all that common, but when they happened, large swathes of Menos Forest would be destroyed. Hollows were territorial creatures at the best of times, and Cameron chuckled as a barrage of cero from the alligator's group tore into the rhino's. The Rhino screamed for retaliation and got it. Soon, the forest was bathed in a crimson glow. "W-Why are we here, Lord Cameron?" she asked.

She flinched as a reproachful slap almost knocked her off the branch. "What did I say about stuttering?"

"Not to…"

"So stop." She glanced down again and pressed herself into his side. 'Her feathers feel nice,' he thought.

"Can we leave?"

"Eh? Why would we do that? I want to see how my little skit plays out."

The implication of his words dawned on her. "You caused this?" she gasped. "How?"

"You forget I can turn invisible," he said drily. "It was pretty easy actually. I killed a few of their subordinates and left their bodies strewn along the borders of their territories. It didn't take long for them to start blaming each other."

She puffed out her cheeks. It was really adorable how her feathered cheeks ruffled. She pecked her steel-hard beak into his side. "You shouldn't do that!" she scolded.

"Why not? They're for you," he said. "Soon enough, one of them is going to win. Then, the winner is going to feast. I'm going to kill the winner. If you eat it, you'll be eating thousands of souls at once. It should be enough to propel you straight to adjuchas. If not, we'll just rinse and repeat."

X

Sure enough, Anathi became an adjuchas that day. The rhino won, but Cameron came down like a meteor and drove his horn into the base of its neck. He ate a few broken gillian, but left the lion's share for his fluffy student. She had a feast and became a gillian. He was a little disappointed that his plan to "warp evolve" her didn't quite work, but it only took four more gillian for her to ascend.

Her adjuchas form was a larger penguin. She stood almost twice as tall as he was, though if she were to lie down, he'd be longer than her height. Around her neck, a rest of golden feathers marked her as an emperor penguin. Her mask now sported feather designs and had a ring of seven horns that jutted out like a crown. Unfortunately, she still could not fly, and likely would never be able to. Instead, her flippers were clawed and bladed along the edge. With a bit of practice, she found that she could extend her flippers like whips.

Her cero was colored an ivory white, like an elephant's tusk. Cameron taught her to compress her cero in the same way he did, albeit without the additional improvements of his air manipulation. The result was a faster laser with more piercing power.

X

A week after her ascension, Cameron stared solemnly at her. "W-What can I do for you, Lord Cameron?" she asked.

He snorted. It sounded unnatural coming from a dragonfly. "You've had some time to get used to your new body, correct?"

Anathi nodded enthusiastically. While she wasn't very fast, her flippers were and could easily outpace most hollows. If she placed enough reiryoku into them, they would sever multiple quartz trees like a buzzsaw spinning with her as the focal point. "Yes! I was able to beat a pack of gillian by myself yesterday!"

'That's the bare minimum an adjuchas should be able to do though,' Aaron thought. Not wanting to crush the girl's spirit, he said nothing. "Good, now we're going to help you develop a combat style by sparring against me."

Anathi recoiled as though physically struck. "I could never raise a hand to you, my lord!"

"Really? Or are you just afraid of getting thrashed?" Her awkward shuffling was all the answer he needed. "Relax, I don't expect you to win, nor am I going to use all I have. I just want you to get better control of your flippers. For example, your goal will be to herd me with your flippers into the path of your cero. If you charge a cero while attacking with your flippers, you should be able to corner opponents easily."

Anathi nodded resolutely. "Yes!"

Her first attempt was laughable. Each flipper moved as though it had a mind of its own. She swung one blade across a quartz tree with all her might, bisecting it. Cameron just scoffed as he floated above the blow. "Something that slow won't hit me, Anathi!" he shouted down.

In response, her other flipper extended directly towards him, threatening to skewer the dragonfly hollow. This time, Cameron swirled in the air, flying upside down to avoid the deadly spear. Things progressed in that fashion until Anathi was left panting at the exertion.

"You're too fast," she complained.

"Not really, I'm actually only moving slightly faster than your flippers. The reason you can't hit me is because your flippers aren't working together. Herd me," he advised.

A few hours later, she finally managed to clip him with a cero. His hierro was more than up to the task of fending off a newly evolved adjuchas so the only reward she got for her trouble was a congratulatory pat on her head. "So what now?" she asked.

"We keep going, what else? I don't expect you to be able to hit me when I have La Corriente active, but I do want you to be able to match my base speed. Your form is naturally slow so you need to get better at dealing with faster opponents." She groaned but acquiesced in the end.

Her training also consisted of dodging practice. Although he didn't emphasize dodging, he did insist that she practiced at least a little. For a few hours each day, he would toss underpowered ceros towards her and have her dodge by making as little movement as possible. She… wasn't too enthusiastic about this particular training method, and she didn't seem to get any better at avoiding lasers, but she did develop one hell of a hierro. Out of desperation, she crossed her flippers in front of her and channeled as much reiryoku as she could into them. Her feathers stood on end and redirected the attack. After a bit of experimentation, he found that just as water birds like ducks and penguins had feathers coated in oil that repelled water, her feathers could repel raw reiryoku. This meant that ranged attacks like cero, bala, and many shinigami kido would just wash off. She was disappointed to find that her feathers had a much harder time fending against direct physical attacks and element based reiryoku attacks. She wouldn't be laughing off his Aire Cero anytime soon.

Having developed Anathi's strength he decided that the time had come to leave Menos Forest. This time, instead of the human world, they would be headed to the deserts of Hueco Mundo, above the quartz canopy. If a hollow looked up, it might have seen the odd sight of two adjuchas, a penguin snuggling into the side of a massive dragonfly.

 **Author's Note**

 **A cero is spiritual. This means that it's not really light. It gives off light, but that isn't the main property of spirit particles. Spirit particles have mass (in the spirit world), or they wouldn't be used to make up everything from houses to swords. Since they have mass, a cero isn't so much a breath of fire or some kind of plasma cannon as it is a concussive laser. Think of it as something comparable to Cyclops' eye blasts from the X-Men. This is why ceros can be dodged so easily by the stronger characters in the series and why adding air (and Harribel's water) to it is feasible.**

 **Here is an updated timeline of events.**

 **\- Anathi is saved by Cameron sometime in the early 1700s.  
\- One week after the incident, Manami and Johan report to Shunsui, creating a dossier on the "intelligent hollow."  
\- 5 years later, Anathi is sold as a slave.  
\- 30 years after that (35 since the incident), Cameron kills Red and becomes a gillian.  
\- 12 years after becoming a gillian, he becomes an adjuchas.  
\- 4 years after becoming an adjuchas, he has pretty much taken over Menos Forest thanks to his unique abilities and speed. He finds Anathi and decides to save her on a whim.  
\- 3 years later, he decides that he's had enough of Menos Forest. He cooks up a plan to "warp evolve" Anathi. **

**Total Time: 54 years since first meeting Anathi. This means that it is now the mid-late 1700s.**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.**

 **Pat reon Sorre**


	6. Chapter 6

**Preface**

 **I've gotten to the point where I've almost run out of pre-written chapters. That means that I might fall back to the schedule I promised when I began writing, one chapter every two weeks. I'm going to avoid doing that for as long as possible because I like writing and giving you guys weekly updates, but this is my final semester of my Master's program and it might be out of my hands. Regardless, you have my promise that if I do go to one chapter every two weeks, I'll return to a weekly schedule as soon as I graduate and get myself a stable job. Anyway, happy Monday. Next week: Finding My Image.**

 **Chapter 6: Natural Wisdom**

Cameron woke with a feathery ball of fluff attached to his abdomen. 'If we were both human, this might be the start of an ecchi anime,' he mused. He looked down at Anathi. She had managed to become an adjuchas with remarkable swiftness and he couldn't help the swelling pressure in his chest. 'Is this what it feels like to be a father?'

Her skull mask aside, she looked remarkably adorable sleeping there. The two had taken to sleeping atop the highest quartz tree they could find, the tip just kissing the ceiling of Menos Forest. Partially, it was for security, since there were hardly any flying type hollows and even fewer that were adjuchas capable of facing Cameron. The other reason was that seeing Menos Forest from the highest point possible was something of a hobby for him. It was unearthing just how beautiful a forest made entirely of quartz could be in the right light and from the right vantage. For a moment, he got lost taking in the peaceful visage and had to remind himself that they were hollows. Then, he smirked as much as his mandibles would allow and booted her off the branch.

The adjuchas class penguin squawked indignantly as she plummeted towards the ground. "Waahhhhhh! Master! Help me!"

"Hahaha," Cameron cracked up as he watched his disciple fall the the ground. Suddenly, a clawed flipper speared itself into the underside of the branch they had slept on. With a grunt of effort, Anathi swung herself up and back onto the branch. "Did you sleep well?" he asked with a chuckle.

She ran towards him and pecked him repeatedly, with only partial success. It tickled more than anything, the hierro of the older adjuchas considerably stronger than her own. "You. Are. Such. A. Meanie!" she punctuated each word with what would have in any other situation been a vicious jab.

"Sorry, sorry, I couldn't resist," he laughed. "Are you ready?"

With those words her demeanor did a 180 shift. "Is today the day?" she asked.

"Yes, we're going to find our way to the surface."

"Say, Lord Cameron," she called after a moment of silence, "what does the moon look like?"

Cameron laughed and gave her feathers a good ruffle with his forelimbs. "Back to 'Lord' am I? It looks like a shiny, silvery ball in the sky. Some people say it's made of cheese."

"You'll always be Lord Cameron. You're also sometimes a meanie," she sniffed. "What's cheese?"

"It's a food that humans eat."

"Does it taste good?"

"Some people like it, but others think it smells bad. I've also met some others who get sick at even just a single bite."

"D-Do you remember your past life, my lord?"

Cameron lightly cuffed her beak, sending her head wobbling like a bobblehead . "Again, please call me Cam. And yes, but I think I'm something of an oddity. If it ever comes up, you are not to tell anyone I remember my past."

"Okay." She looked around their perch. "Say, Lord Cameron, when we go up to the surface, can we come back? I like this view."

He sighed and brought her closer to him. Her innocence never failed to amaze the insectoid adjuchas. It was one thing for a man who remembered the human world, and a life of peace, to appreciate tranquility, but another for someone like her to do the same. It was moments like these that made him desire a better life for the hollows. Then, he would remember the primitive nature of most of his brethren and amend that to just the likes of Anathi. "Sure, Anathi. We can come back. Or, we'll see a real sunrise in the human world one day. Either way, I promise I'll show you more views like this."

She said nothing, choosing instead to snuggle deeper into his side. Her feathers felt slick, short and smooth as though forming one unbroken surface. He felt her heartbeat and only took a moment to consider how strange it was that the dead had organs at all before relaxing into the warmth of the moment.

X

"Say, Lord Cameron."

"Hmm?" Cameron was soaring through the canopy of quartz, his four wings beating the air with an intimidating sizzle. Anathi's smaller frame was clutched in between his six legs. Her extendible flippers had skewered a hollow that looked suspiciously like a turkey while he swooped down. It was a humorous sight, one none of the denizens of the forest were likely to laugh at. Any hollow with the brains of the average monkey knew better than to do anything other than hide underground when it heard the telltale sizzle of the dragonfly. Most times, prey wouldn't even have that warning as the damned dragonfly would be cloaked, his air manipulation preventing all sound from alerting his prey. Denizens of the forest were grateful for the penguin, her weight unintentionally slowing him down had saved more than one of their lives in the past. If nothing else, the dragonfly couldn't turn the penguin invisible as well so they at least got a bit of warning.

With one flipper, she tore off a leg and held it above her for her master to munch on mid-flight. "How are we going to go to the surface?" she asked.

After several seconds of voracious munching, he answered, "We're going to go find the one called Sage. He's supposed to be the oldest adjuchas around so if anyone knows how to head on up, it would be him."

"Isn't he super strong? He has to be to have survived that long, right?"

Her simplistic logic made him chuckle. "You do know I'm less than a hundred years old myself, right? In Hueco Mundo, and among spiritual beings in general, strength is not predicated on age, though it can be a factor. Because we are all made of reishi, our strength is directly reflective of our ability to mold reishi. It really comes down to natural talent, training, and willpower. All age means is that you have lived longer. Usually, that means that they have some innate talent or have had the time to train, but not always. Tell me, how else might someone live longer?"

Anathi scrunched her nose in thought, or she would have had she had a nose instead of a beak. It was unfortunate how hollows couldn't remember their past lives. This amnesia made the average hollow a very stupid individual. Without experience and knowledge, wisdom is also lost. Each hollow would "grow up" as though from infancy, born into a world of cannibalistic slaughter. It was no wonder even the intelligent ones were homicidal psychopaths. No, Anathi would not be like the average hollow if he could help it, even if he had to raise her like a daughter. "Umm, being older means you have lived longer, but it doesn't mean you have to be strong. I guess if you're good at running away or hiding. You could also be really lucky and meet only weaker hollows."

"Good, but you forgot one more method: negotiation. Most hollows aren't the type to talk things out, but some are. This is especially true if you can force a double death. For example, if one hollow is about to die but shows that it can take its killer down with it, do you think anyone would go out of their way to hunt it?"

"I guess not. You can't eat if you're dead."

"Good, so this Sage isn't necessarily the strong type of old. He could be the cowardly type or the lucky type of old."

"How will we know?"

"We'll have to find him and see," he smiled.

"How will we find him?"

"I've heard that his territory is to the west. We can start looking there."

X

It took then a month of searching before the two finally pinned down an exact location. Of course, searching in Hueco Mundo was synonymous with finding any hollow that might know something and threatening to eat them until one of them finally spilled. It was strange just how loyal some were to the so called Sage. Curiously, Cameron noticed that some hollows had spikes of quartz embedded into their bodies.

"Lord Cameron, do we have to kill them?" Anathi asked as she prodded a pair of cowering hollows. At last, they had found a pair that knew who they were searching for. "They did tell us after all."

"That depends, really." Both were of the adjuchas class, albeit weaker than himself. 'I wonder if I should have one of them fight Anathi for her life. They're both at around Anathi's level so this could help her grow…' He then shut down that line of thought when he saw the two hollows try to shield one another from his gaze. 'No, I've been lamenting all this time that hollows were stupid and baseless. If they can muster the empathy to care about one another, I can find it in me not to eat them.' He turned to address the pair. "What are your names?"

"L-Loly," an adjuchas in the form of a centipede said. She was curled protectively around what looked like a human sized hedgehog.

"I-I'm Menoly. P-Please leave us alone. We've told you everything already."

'So they're Aizen's future aides… We'll definitely run into them eventually. I could kill them and be done with it… the two didn't exactly have a happy ending if I recall and Loly is a sadistic bitch when she wants to be…' After a moment of contemplation in which he was only a little swayed by Anathi's pleading eyes, he decided to leave them be. "Relax, I'm not going to kill you. Or cut off half your legs and watch you wander around desperate to survive. Or have you two fight to the death for my amusement. Or use you as bait so I can eat stronger hollows. Or make you my slaves. Or - "

He cut off what would have been a creative and morbid description of their deaths in favor of yelping in surprise and pain. Anathi had fluttered onto his back and jabbed down with her beak, straight between the two chitinous armor plates that divided his head from his thorax. "Stop. Bullying. Them!"

"Owowowowowow! Can you not do that?" he shouted indignantly as he curled his tail and gripped the angry penguin by the scruff of her neck.

"No, either eat them or leave them alone! You shouldn't torture the poor things; see how scared they are?"

Cameron set her down with a huff. "I wasn't torturing them," he pouted childishly.

At the moment, Loly and Menoly weren't scared so much as dumbfounded. They could clearly feel that both the penguin and dragonfly were adjuchas level hollows, but the dragonfly was overwhelmingly superior. The amount of reiatsu it gave off in their brief struggle had been immense and that cero had cleaved through a good chunk of forest, enough to cow the two instantly. And yet, this penguin, who wasn't any stronger than either of them, was standing up for them without becoming food herself. Hueco Mundo didn't work that way. There were some rare cases in which hollows of comparable power worked together, like themselves, but when a stronger hollow formed a pack, the weaker hollows were fodder and slaves that stayed alive only as long as they proved useful. Or the leader wasn't feeling peckish. The idea that a powerful hollow would care about his subordinate, for nothing else could allow the penguin to physically assault the dragonfly without consequence, was a brand new concept for them.

The massive dragonfly cleared his throat. "Alright, comedy aside, you've told me where I can find this Sage. Now, tell me more about him. What does he do? Does he have any special abilities? You are the first hollows that haven't been mindlessly loyal to him. Every other hollow has chosen to die rather than talk. Why? What's so special about him?"

"W-We don't know," Loly spoke up for the duo. Her voice gained strength as she became more assured of the pair's immediate survival. "All we know is that the Sage has set up what he calls the Commune. It's only full of base form hollows and adjuchas that are even weaker than we are, but there are a lot of them so this whole area is his. He's been offering hollows safety and a power boost. We're not sure how because we rejected his offer, but it's too creepy. We were on our way out of the territory before you found us."

"Fine, that's plenty. I just have two more questions and you're free to go. One, what does he look like? Two, does he have a way to get to the surface?"

This time, Menoly found the courage to speak. "He looks like he's made of quartz trees. You can't mistake him for anyone else. He claims that he has become one with the forest and can help people ascend to new heights of power. Some think he means that he can take hollows to the surface world and others think that his followers will evolve more quickly."

"Lord Cameron, do you think he's been training hollows like you did me? I became an adjuchas in three years after all," she said proudly. She yelped and ate a mouthful of dirt when his clawed foot slapped into the back of her head.

"One, don't go around telling people my name. Two, don't go around telling people I trained you. Anything someone else knows about us is information they can potentially use against us," he said sternly.

"W-Wait, three years!? That's impossible!" Loly exclaimed.

"That's not something I'm willing to talk about. Now, as promised, you are free to go. I further promise that if we ever meet again, I will not attack you without provocation. I recommend you two develop better strategies for taking down stronger opponents by working together. You should also focus on practicing your natural abilities instead of relying solely on instincts. Strength is about more than simply overpowering your opponents and you're clearly smart enough to understand that."

"C-Can you make us strong too? If you can turn someone into an adjuchas in three years, you can also make us stronger, right?" Menoly asked timidly. Her paws were rubbing together in what he assumed was a nervous tick.

"Menoly!" Loly scolded her partner. "We swore we wouldn't rely on anyone else!"

"We swore we wouldn't put anyone before each other, Loly. But he's strong and he wouldn't use us like tools if we join him, right?"

"He wouldn't," Anathi answered in his stead with a firm nod.

Now it was Cameron's turn to be dumbstruck. 'I wasn't expecting to add to my little pack… Is this a good idea? They didn't play a large part in the main story and I'm not too concerned about changing the timeline anyway, but should I let them follow me?' "You're right, I don't treat Anathi like a tool. If anything, she is my friend and partner. However, I refuse to train you. I also will not allow you to follow us. Anathi and I move quickly by air. I can't carry three adjuchas at the same time. In the future, this might change. If we meet again and I have a permanent base, you can ask me again. Until then, goodbye."

Hearing a clear dismissal, the two mumbled their thanks and scurried away from him. Anathi looked at their retreating forms with a look of mild disappointment. "Do you think they'll be alright?"

He sighed. "It's not our business, but I think they'll be fine. I've got this weird feeling."

She smiled as she leaned under his wings. "Yeah, me too. I feel like they will become stronger. I also feel as though we'll meet again."

X

Somewhat appropriately, the Sage's abode was a massive quartz tree that pierced the dirt ceiling of Menos Forest at the center of his territory. Cameron had flown with Anathi to the highest branch of an adjacent tree looking down on the clearing. He used his prehensile tail to pick her off his back and set her on the branch in front of him.

"Look, when we go down there, you are not to ever get off my back unless I say so. You are also to remain silent unless I tell you to answer. Are we clear?"

"Do you expect to have to fight?" she asked with a curious tilt of her head. She scratched the golden feathers around her neck, something he discovered was a nervous tick of hers.

"I'd like to avoid it if at all possible, but I have this weird feeling that I'm going to have to kill him."

"Why? He's trying to make a safe place for weaker hollows to get stronger, right?"

"Yes, or at least that's the message he's spouting." He ruffled her feathers and chuckled at her indignant squawk. "You've got to learn to read between the lines. A hollow must consume spirit energy to grow more powerful. Even if he is benign to his subordinates, he has to kill other hollows to feed both himself and his pack, or commune or whatever he's calling it. Why else would Loly and Menoly be leaving his territory? I also suspect that he's not as kind to his subordinates as he'd like us to think. Let me ask you one thing: What is the single most important thing in the world to you?"

She shyly rubbed her feet against the quartz and mumbled something that couldn't be heard.

"Hmm?"

"... you…" she whispered.

He was rendered speechless by the sincerity in her eyes. They spoke of nothing but love and admiration. Sure, he was her only friend, but he had not expected her to get so thoroughly attached in only three years. 'Both the Xhosa people and penguins are social by nature. Is she reflecting that? Has she imprinted on me somehow?' he wondered. He had a moment of minor crisis where he felt like a mother duck. Deciding to shelve the topic for the moment, he asked again, "Well, let's pretend you are any other hollow. What would be the most important thing in the world to you?"

"Eating!" she chirped with more confidence.

"Right, or even more basic than that, survival. Every hollow in Menos Forest is out for itself, with a few exceptions like us and maybe the two we met earlier. But, the hollows we met chose to die rather than tell us where we could find the Sage. What does this mean for us?" he guided her.

"Umm… it means that they all love the Sage more than living!"

"Right, but that would mean one of two things is true: Either I am wrong about hollows or there is something wrong with the hollows in the Sage's territory."

"Can't these hollows just be different from the rest?"

"Maybe, if it was one or two hollows that showed such fierce loyalty, then I could believe it. But so many? No, that's really unlikely. Do you remember what all the hollows we met had in common?"

"Yeah, you said it was weird that they looked like they had bits of trees sticking out of them."

"Yes, and what did Menoly say the Sage looked like?"

"Quartz… you think the Sage is somehow controlling the hollows!" she exclaimed.

Cameron stood back proudly. Sure, it wasn't a difficult leap in logic, but logic was something that many if not most hollows lacked. "This would explain why we've only seen weaker hollows around here. It's almost as though the stronger ones have been driven off somehow. I suspect that the weaker hollows are all he can control and the stronger ones have been killed by human wave tactics. Hop on, we're going to go down there. Be careful, okay? He might know we're here already."

Cameron cloaked himself and descended. To anyone who bothered to look, it would appear as though Anathi was floating down from the sky on her own. Sure, it wasn't very stealthy, but he had another purpose in mind.

"So you have come," a grating voice rang out from the tree. The tree itself was hollow and Cameron had this weird feeling that he had found his way to the surface. "Rumors of an invisible killer has run rampant through the forest. You may as well reveal yourself."

'Interesting… I was sure I left most of my opponents dead… Either he's built himself a spy network or he's got another way of gathering information.' He shimmered into the visual spectrum. "Are you aware of what I want?"

"You wish to head to the surface." His voice sounded like two stones rubbing together, as one might expect of a being made of quartz. The Sage stepped out of the cavernous tree and into the light. He was about nine feet tall with the general shape of a regular human being. Surely, the legendary golems of Hebrew mythology looked like him. "But why, when you can rule as king here?"

"Unlike you, I am not satisfied by ruling a glorified cave. I wish to see the sky," he replied drily. "Now, will you oppose me or will you get out of my way?"

"And what of you?" he asked the penguin still sitting atop the dragonfly. "Won't you join me? We would always welcome a powerful friend." Anathi remembered Cameron's order and said nothing. "Very well then, you may pass. This treehollow leads up to the surface. I wish you well in your travels."

The Sage stepped aside and gestured towards the tree. As Cameron approached, he felt Anathi stiffen for a moment. She then forced herself to relax and pressed herself to him. "Lord Cameron," she whispered, "the tree makes me feel uneasy."

He stopped just shy of the entrance. "Hmm?"

"It scares me. It feels like him." Then, she flinched, almost throwing herself off his back. One after another, images of powerful hollows approaching the tree filled her vision. Then, one by one, each would be skewered by sharp spines that seemingly grew from the tree itself, almost as though it were alive. "It's a trap!" she screamed, just in time for Cameron to fly off and avoid a blade of quartz that rose out of the ground.

"So that's how it is, huh? This is how you've survived so long." Beneath him, a legion of hollows gathered, each with the telltale spike of quartz embedded into its spine. "You lure the stronger hollows into the trap and feed your horde. If they insist on eating you before going to the surface, you use your puppets to wear them down until you can win. It's not a bad plan. How does the spike control them exactly? I'm guessing you excel at reishi manipulation and have taken over their bodies?"

"Oh, no, nothing so drastic. I merely bring them peace of mind. I am, after all, the Sage."

'So he's using the spikes as transmitters to control their emotions. That explains why they were so loyal and possessed some individuality. They would receive a boost in power from him, but would slowly change their thinking to idolizing him. Clever.' Cameron hovered lazily in the air. "Tell me one last thing, is the tree actually a path up, or is it just another lie?"

The golem released a booming laugh. "Indeed, this tree does lead to the surface. Every good lie must have a kernel of truth after all. I was wondering why someone like you had such a mediocre adjuchas as your subordinate, but I see now. Your servant is sharp."

"She is my friend," he replied firmly. He did make sure to file away her sensitivity for later discussion. He had reasoned out the trap. A golem made of quartz should be able to control the quartz trees and he wasn't about to enter what amounted to an extension of someone else's body. But instead of reason, it almost seemed as though Anathi had seen through the trap on a more literal level. That was worth looking into.

"No matter, what will you do now? You can fly away, but this is your only hope of reaching the surface," he taunted.

He felt Anathi bristle, but calmed her by stroking her back with his tail. 'Even now, he's trying to convince me that I should fight. He's convinced he can wear me down.' "True enough. I suppose you must all die now. I thank you for providing me this final farewell feast." With that, he fired a quick cero towards the Sage. It crashed down, but the Sage slapped it aside with a derisive snort. 'Okay, I'm actually going to have to put in some effort to get through his hierro then.'

The Sage just smiled and gestured with his arms, causing several tendrils of almost plantlike stone to reach towards him. Cameron flew out of the way with La Corriente and laughed. "You can't possibly hit wind with earth," he mocked.

"That may be," his opponent agreed readily, "but you are expending energy to fly while I am relaxing on the ground. Who will tire first?"

"Then let's tilt those scales. Aire Cero!" he shouted. A beam of navy blue reiatsu shout out in the Sage's general direction, but missed him by a mile.

The golem offered a mocking bow. "Truly, your aim is impeccable. Were you aiming for my followers perhaps?"

Cameron swung it like a sword, bisecting the trees around the clearing. All but the tunnel to the surface were cut down. He then moved to mow down the fodder, but stopped short when he heard Anathi shriek.

Rather than falling in the direction he had intended, one of the quartz trees seemingly grew a buttress that forced it to fall towards him. He had seen it too late, too focused on removing his opponent's avenues of attack. He zipped out of the way with near supersonic speed, but his own max speed was capped by Anathi hanging on his back. She shrieked in pain as one of the branches grew a vicious edge and clawed off her left flipper. Losing hold, she plummeted towards the eager jaws of the Sage's minions.

"ANATHI!" Cameron screamed as he forgot all caution and nose dived towards the ground.

Just before her crown could meet the rising horn of another hollow, he caught her. His six legs formed a protective cage around her relatively softer form. He was about to rise again, this time not limited by a weight on his back, but he felt something grab his tail. He looked down and saw a baboon type hollow with ax-like blades attached to its arms climb up his tail.

He rose out of the range of the rest of the hollows, but had to dodge a barrage of bone spikes, rocks, and the odd cero from a weaker adjuchas. Meanwhile, the baboon had reached his mid back and swung its bladed forearms at his wings with abandon. He winced at each swing. Thankfully, his unwanted passenger was not an adjuchas so the blows lacked enough power to sever the wings. It was more akin to death by a thousand cuts rather than a woodsman's ax.

'I need to go faster,' he thought as he narrowly dived out of way of the Sage's considerably more powerful cero. Unfortunately, the baboon clawing at his wings kept him from beating them fast enough. "Anathi," he called with a little more desperation in his voice than he would have liked. "Come on! Get a hold of yourself! I need you to use your flipper and get the monkey off my back!"

"I-I'll try," she stammered. She looped her flipper and extended it around his torso, spearing the place where she thought the baboon to be. She missed the first strike. The second was easily parried by her opponent. "I can't," she wailed.

'Shit, I can throw it off if I can accelerate, but the Sage knows that too.' He dodged another cero that came dangerously close to hitting him. 'He stops me before I can hit move too far in any direction.' "Anathi," he grunted, "brace yourself."

He grit his mandibles and allowed the next cero to hit him while protecting Anathi as best he could. Searing pain filled him, clearly the sheer number of hollows the Sage had eaten did amount to something. Cameron grinned through the pain and allowed himself to fall. "La Corriente," he whispered, and an imagined path of air appeared before his mind's eye.

As he neared the earth, the corridor of wind curved a steep ninety degrees. The baboon was thrown off by the force of the shift while Anathi squeaked in pain from the motion. Their passenger wasn't going to be getting up from that anytime soon, or ever. Instead of canceling the corridor, he aimed it through the hollows.

He became a blurred missile that ripped through the hollows with all the power of a tornado. Bits of blood and bone flew everywhere, creating a haze of red behind the speeding duo. Finally, he angled himself towards the Sage, but he had placed himself directly in front of the tree. Cameron had to reroute the slipstream away from the tree and instead of spearing the adjuchas through his chest, ripped out an arm.

"For Anathi," he said as he slowed to a stop.

The Sage snorted with derision. "Don't make me laugh. You don't care about her, none of us do. The strong feed on the weak and you are no different. You only turned because you would otherwise cleave through your only path to the surface. Why don't you drop that liability already? All of my subordinates are dead and you can easily eat her to regain some stamina."

"She is _not_ a liability," he hissed with all the venom of the hydra.

"Lord Cameron," she whispered. "Please drop me."

"I'm not going to just abandon you," he hissed under his breath.

"I know, I trust you. Please trust me too," she replied, her voice atypically firm.

Reluctantly, he allowed her to fall to the ground and winced at her yelp of pain. "Good, see, now you are much lighter. Isn't it fun to stop pretending?"

"Step away from the tree and let me kill you, you little shit," he growled. A navy blue light shimmered through his body and coalesced into a more powerful cero than anything he'd fired thus far.

"And why would I leave the only thing keeping me alive?" he chuckled as he stuck the stump of his arm into the quartz. Slowly, they could see his arm reform. "You don't really think I'm so stupid, do you?"

"Lord Cameron! Now!" Suddenly, Anathi's flipper shot out of the dirt, spearing his leg and carrying him away from the tree.

"Aire Cero!" With a roar containing all of his frustration and rage, he released the pent up energy towards the hollow. Sure, he had two arms again, but that did nothing to keep him from being obliterated by the empowered cero. Cameron sank to his knees in exhaustion as the last of the Sage's screams died out. Slowly, he crawled to Anathi. "You alive?"

"It's just an arm, my lord. You know it'll grow back."

The two looked around at the massive pile of corpses that had been the entire population of the Sage's territory. "Well, he went through so much trouble to prepare us a feast. Shall we dig in?"

 **Author's Note**

 **This chapter had several purposes. First, I wanted Cameron and Anathi finally head to the surface, meeting new and more powerful hollows. Second, I wanted to introduce some canon characters. I could have brought in others, but they were all too strong to reasonably be found in Menos Forest. Third, I wanted Cameron to begin making a name for himself not only as a hunter, but as a keeper of territory. By claiming the Sage's old turf, he has now set himself up as more than a nomad; he is now a ruler in his own right. Fourth, I wanted to flush out Cameron and Anathi's relationship. They are almost like father and daughter in many respects. He shows her new experiences and teaches her both morals and survival skills. In another respect, he is also a friend, a big brother who protects her while allowing some backtalk when it suits him. Finally, I wanted to flush out Anathi's special ability. In life, she was spiritually aware and possessed psychometric powers. I hinted at this with her quote in chapter 3, "No, I do not see the future, pale one. I simply see the past more clearly than the rest." It then makes no sense that someone with power as a plus wouldn't have power as a minus.**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated. If you'd like to contribute to my hobby, please find me at:**

 **Pat reon dot com slash Sorre**


	7. Chapter 7

**Preface**

 **Hello everyone, happy Monday. As promised, here is chapter seven of On My Wings. This chapter features a noticeable timeskip of about a century so I could rush a bit closer towards canon.**

 **When I cancelled Finding My Image, I said that the premise of League of Legends Champions as Nasu-verse style Heroic Spirits still interested me and that I'd make a spiritual successor in some other story. The first chapter of that will come out next week. It'll be a Worm x League of Legends crossover using the Nasu-verse Heroic Spirit elements as the glue so if you like LoL or Worm, be excited for that.**

 **If you don't know what Worm is, read it. It's basically a Marvel-esque superhero story that doesn't ignore the darker societal and psychological issues associated with powers. Depending on how you read it, the ending will trip you up pretty bad. The author goes by Wildbow and the web serial can be found with a simple Google search.**

 **Anyway, have a great week everyone,**

 **Sorre**

 **Chapter 7: Western Wind**

Cameron chomped on the Sage's mask and felt a rush of reishi fill him. Soon enough, it would be as though the fight had never happened. No, he'd be stronger than ever. His dome-like compound eyes spied Anathi to one side, nibbling at some weaker hollow. 'Not even an adjuchas,' he thought contemptuously. "Anathi," he called, "come eat the stronger hollows. You need more reishi to grow back that arm."

"I… I'm okay," she mumbled, "Please enjoy."

"We've known each other for three years and you're still afraid of taking my food? Get your fluffy ass over here and chow down already."

Soon enough, her hunger won out against any sense of propriety and she joined him in eating as much as she could fit in her small beak. Cameron saw this and nodded with satisfaction. As they ate, his thoughts turned towards his feathery friend. 'She's three, closer to four years old now… If she has any unique abilities, she should be strong enough for them to start manifesting. Come to think of it, she knew about the treehollow being a trap before I did.' After their meal, he ushered her into the treehollow. "Anathi, when we first approached this place, you said that it's a trap."

"Uh huh."

"How did you know?" She began fidgeting, her newly grown arm moving to scratch her yellow neck feathers. "I'm not mad," he said gently, "I just want to know why you thought so."

"I… I saw them… I saw other hollows approach and die," she said hesitantly. "It was like I could see into the past."

"Psychometry then?"

"Huh?"

"Psychometry is what humans call the ability to derive the history of an object. Is that why you thought Loly and Menoly would get stronger and meet us again?"

"Umm… yes? I got this weird feeling that it wouldn't be the last time we'd see them."

Cameron laughed. It started as a quiet chuckle but soon became a full bellied guffaw. "This is great, Anathi!" he crowed. He picked up the small penguin by his tail and spun her around. "You're going to be so awesome!"

"Waaaaaaa~ Put me down!" she cried, her arms flapping wildly.

He slowed to a stop and laid her gently on the ground. "Sorry, Anathi, but you have a really great ability." She blushed and shuffled awkwardly at the praise. "I mean it. Once your ability matures, you'll always have the advantage in any fight because you'll know their abilities but they won't know yours."

"I… I don't think I can control it…"

"Probably not now, but you will eventually," he said. "When you become an arrancar, you'll have an easier time."

"What's an arrancar?"

"An arrancar is a hollow who has broken their own mask. They become incapable of evolving any further, but also gain the powers of a shinigami by sealing much of their reishi inside zanpakuto. We'll both become arrancar at some point, but that isn't for a long while off. Now, let's check out the tree."

The treehollow was… hollow… surprise. Cameron smirked as his young charge gasped in awe. Sure enough, the two could see a pinprick of light that shone through the top. The moonlight that shone into the cavernous tree reflected off of the quartz structure, refracting in a dazzling display of color. It was an impressive sight, one that reminded him of stained glass windows in cathedrals.

"Amazing," breathed Anathi. She extended her flippers as high as she could and marveled as the refracting light bounced off of her ivory claws. "My lord, can… can this be our home?"

He thought about it. He wanted to indulge the little penguin, but security came before anything else in Hueco Mundo. "We'll see," he chuckled, "now hop on. We're heading on up."

Once Anathi scrambled onto his back, Cameron flapped his gossamer wings and floated higher. Each wingbeat brought them closer to the moonlight that shone from the surface. His spherical vision afforded him an excellent view of his surroundings. As they drew closer, he could see that the walls of the tree were uneven, craggy ridges that scattered the light. His wings only added to the light show until finally, they cleared the tree and broke into the night sky of Hueco Mundo.

"Woah…" Anathi sat transfixed by the moon. Her lord had described it as a silver sphere, but words failed to do it justice. "It's beautiful…"

"Yes, yes it is," he said as they hovered in place. He looked around. The desert was… utterly unimpressive in comparison. He could spy some smaller adjuchas in the distance. Far off, at the very edge of the horizon, he thought he could make out the dark silhouette of Las Noches, the palace of Barragan and later, the Espada. 'I still need to figure out what I want to do about that whole mess,' he thought with a sigh.

"Is something wrong, my lord?"

"No, nothing immediate. Anathi," his tail snaked out to grab the penguin by the waist. He curled around and brought her to face him. "Promise me, promise me that you'll never tell anyone what you can do. If anyone asks, your only power is extending your arms. Your ability to see the history of objects is our secret, okay?"

She looked at him in askance, head tilted to one side like an adorable puppy. "Why?"

"If people know about your ability, your knowledge won't ever come as a surprise. That means it won't be as effective in combat. You must also never tell anyone, even your allies, okay?"

"Will we have allies?" she sounded excited and he was reminded once more that she was mentally three years old, going on four. "Ally" was synonymous with "friend" for her.

"Someday," he promised, "but not all allies are to be trusted."

"But I trust you."

"But not all allies are me."

"... okay," she chirped, accepting that childish logic. "So I can't tell anyone?"

"That's right." 'If Aizen found out anyone knew about his illusions, we'd both get slaughtered.'

Anathi squirmed out of his tail and hopped onto his back. She lifted herself up even higher by planting her flippers onto his back and extending them up. "There's so much sand here…"

"Yes, deserts are usually like that," he said drily. He gave their surroundings another once over. The denizens of Menos Forest weren't likely to be threats to him or Anathi. The sage had lived for over a century in the treehollow. He wouldn't have allowed anyone to go on up. If any of the stronger adjuchas in the desert knew about the Sage's tree, they would have already killed him for the free food. That meant he could be reasonably certain that no one knew. It made sense. The tree extended a good forty feet above the desert sand, meaning nothing that stood on the ground would be able to tell that there was a hole at the top. Flight was overpowered, or it would be against any lower tier adjuchas, and maybe even some vasto lordes that hadn't figured out how to walk on air yet. "Yes, Anathi," he answered her earlier question, "yes we can stay at this tree. It'll be our home for the foreseeable future."

"Yay! The tree is so awesome!"

Cameron landed next to the entrance and laughed as his charge waddled around the rim. "Be careful. I'm going to laugh really hard if you fall in," he said.

"I'm not going to - OH SHIT!"

He sighed, "Where did she learn to curse?" Shaking his head, he stepped into their new home and watched her desperately extend her flippers in either direction, claws digging into the walls to stop her descent. Like any other insect, he had no problem clinging to the rugged quartz and followed her down. "Note to self, we're going to renovate…"

X

In hindsight, Cameron found one flaw with their new home. Should the worst come to pass, they could be attacked from multiple directions, the top and bottom of the tree. He fixed that the only way he knew how. After making sure that the tree's top was anchored securely to the desert floor, he moved down into Menos Forest and blew the base of the tree apart using a wide area cero. He then spent an afternoon with Anathi, shaving the newly created break until it was smooth. It reminded him of a Mario game pipe, one of those that would hang from the ceiling and lead to a new stage. He chuckled at the imagery.

The broken bits of quartz tree were gathered in a pile. He then flew into the tree and, with liberal uses of Aire Cero, dug rivets and holes into the remaining structure. With time and patience, the duo managed to create something like a platform in the middle of the treehollow. The entire process took something like a month.

Within that time, they had built up a reputation for themselves. Or rather, Cameron had. Anathi was still the "lucky little shit that gets to ride around on the flying death machine." "Guardian of the West" and the "West Wind" they called him. He found it ironic that he would only gain a semi-official moniker from the denizens of the forest after he had effectively left, but it didn't change the fact that he had essentially taken over the role of the Sage. There was a clear path up and he was the gatekeeper. Literally. Only a flying type hollow could even enter the new passage and those were extremely rare. He wasn't exactly keen on giving other hollows a lift either…

They would remain in the broken tree for over a century. Much of that time was spent training and although Cameron did keep a metaphorical finger on the pulse by going on regular scouting missions, only a handful of noteworthy events occurred.

X

Within the first decade, the duo saw over a dozen packs of adjuchas roaming through the desert. Most of them consisted of only a handful, but one held eight hollows and another held fourteen. Anathi and Cameron quickly developed a method of attack.

First, Cameron would cloak himself and take off with Anathi perched on his back. Although she would still be visible, her physical profile was still much smaller than his own and drew less attention. He would fly high enough that only the most sharp sighted would be able to spot her. Even then, few actively looked at the sky for enemies.

Second, once he found a roaming pack, he would get a broad idea of their general direction. He would then fly ahead and have Anathi burrow her way into the desert sand, all but the very tip of her mask hidden away.

Finally, he would launch a salvo of Aire Cero, forcing them to run in her direction. When she felt the ground vibrate, she would in turn leap out of the dirt, flippers extended to spear the weakest two members of the pack. By the time the initial ambush was over, at least two adjuchas would be dead and the rest would still be left reeling from the attack. After the element of surprise wore off, he would grab Anathi and take off into the sky, where she would slash their prey to ribbons with her longer reach while he flew around all attempts to retaliate. Once all opponents were dead, Cameron flew Anathi and their food back to their nest. Sometimes, he would have to make multiple trips and he'd always feel a bit warmer inside when she'd refuse to touch the food until he was finished.

This tactic didn't always pan out. Sometimes, a few brave adjuchas would try to snipe him out of the sky while at other times, the smarter leaders would order their pack to scatter instead of letting themselves be herded. When they were willing to fight back, Cameron use La Corriente to chart an erratic course, dancing in a pattern only he and Anathi knew, both to evade attacks and to send his partner a signal. Their roles would then reverse. He would keep them still using quick blasts of Aire Cero while Anathi would dig herself out of the sand and crawl towards them silently. Her smooth feathers helped her move noiselessly through the desert. Once she arrived, they would finish off whatever he couldn't kill on his own.

If the pack chose to scatter, he would hunt down the leader, throwing them into disarray. Anathi would kill whatever came towards her, but otherwise, the rest got to live. From these survivors, the two began to build a reputation in the desert.

One day, he was taking a leisurely flight around his territory when he found a group of four large hollows following around a very small one. The apparent leader looked feline and with a bit more focus, he put a name to the beast. "Grimmjow," he whispered.

"My lord?"

"That panther over there," he said, waving with his forelimb. "Do you see him? He's leading a group of four others."

She squinted, trying to get a peak. "I… I think so… He's really small."

"Yes, he's only about your size."

"Is he our dinner?"

"No, his name is Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez and he's very very strong. In fact, he might even be stronger than me."

"Impossible," she scoffed, like a toddler who was told her father wasn't superman, "Lord Cameron is the best." She spoke with such utter confidence that he couldn't help but laugh.

"No, no I'm not. I'm very fast, but I'm not the strongest. We've been winning so easily because we had a better strategy and the advantage of range and firepower. That won't always be the case."

"Still… I think you can beat him," she said stubbornly.

"Perhaps. I doubt he knows how to walk on air yet so I could win if I snipe him down, but that doesn't change the fact that he's one of the strongest adjuchas around right now."

"So… we're not going to fight them?"

"No, we're not," he confirmed.

"Then why do we care?"

"We don't, I was just thinking about whether I should go say hi."

"Ooh, can we?"

He thought about it, but shook his head in the end. "No, I'd rather not. If we do, we'll either have to bow to him as king, or we'll have to fight. I don't want to do either of those things."

"But they could be friends…"

He sighed, "Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez does not have friends. He has minions and enemies. Anything that doesn't bow to him is an enemy."

"Aww… he's a meanie."

Cameron laughed at her simplistic logic. "Yes, yes he is."

X

Almost thirty years later, Cameron and Anathi were interrupted from their leisurely nap by a voice calling from below. He groaned. "Not again…"

Ever since he became the "Guardian of the West," hollows would toss rocks into the pipe to get his attention. "You'd think they'd wise up after the last ten we ate," Anathi grumbled and snuggled deeper into his side.

"No kidding. You want to go deal with it?"

"We can ignore them, right? What are they going to do? Shoot a cero straight up?"

"They might," he mused.

"Then we'll eat them."

"But we'd be homeless."

"Muuu, I don't want to get up…"

"Neither do I… but alas, we must."

With a reluctant sigh, he stood on six legs. He twisted his thorax and tail, relishing in the series of popping noises that rang throughout the hollow tree. Having an exoskeleton meant he couldn't crack his joints as he used to, but this was satisfying in its own way. "Whoever it is down there, you better have a damn good reason for calling me," he shouted. Then, he cloaked himself and left through a side entrance, one just below the dirt ceiling of Menos Forest. Due to the shade of the ceiling, it was impossible to spot from the ground and he could easily sneak in and out of his nest while invisible. He had already done it numerous times, uncloaking directly behind his unwanted guests.

He flew out with every intention of obliterating the idiots, but changed his mind when he saw who they were. As Anathi predicted, Loly and Menoly were back. He nodded in appreciation; it was clear the two worked hard to get stronger. Loly's carapace looked sturdier and now sported wicked spikes in every segment. The centipede's jaws also shone violet with venom, or acid, Cameron couldn't tell immediately. Her partner, Menoly the hedgehog, was considerably larger than she was when he first saw them. Now, she stood at almost seven feet tall on two legs, still small enough to ride on him, but considerably bulkier than she used to be. Her quills were proportionately longer, some of them digging sizable rivets into the dirt. Looking closer, he saw that those quills were serrated; if they got stuck in something, they weren't going to come out without a _lot_ of help and pain.

"Why hello there, ladies," he said, putting on a comically suave British accent.

The two had been staring up into the opening, waiting for either him or Anathi to show. They weren't expecting him to appear just behind them and freaked out. "GAAHHH!" the two cried out. Menoly curled into a ball and sent a barrage of spiles every which way. A combination of hardened air and his hierro stopped the attack from doing any damage. Loly was not idle either. She spun away, catching her partner with the last three segments of her body and wielding her like a flail, if flails were sentient and could shoot spikes like a shotgun. Then, they saw who it was and relaxed marginally. "Please don't do that," Loly bit out.

'I really should name the wind barrier thing… Should I just call it Wind Barrier? What is that in Spanish? That sounds dumb anyay... ' he mused. He smirked when he saw the little penguin use her arms like swings. "Behind you," he drawled.

They whirled around, only for Loly to get a face full of fluff. "Hi, Loly!" Anathi chirped. "You're back!"

"Back?" Menoly asked.

"Anathi," Cameron said in a warning tone.

"Oh, I mean, I thought we'd see you again." 'This is good, right? Lord Cameron said I can't tell anyone about psychetry or psymety or something… This isn't enough for them to know, right?' she thought as she wrapped both of them in a large hug.

"Anyway, what brings you two to our neck of the woods?"

"Are we going to ignore the penguin hugging us?" Loly grumbled. Cameron doubted anyone ever wondered what an awkward centipede looked like, but he now had the answer to this entirely unasked question.

"Yup."

"Okay then…" she looked at the penguin still clinging to her like a limpet. She looked at Menoly who seemed to have given up on squirming free and resigned herself to the hug. The hedgehog even looked to be enjoying herself. She looked at the dragonfly, the Guardian of the West, who had to have the most expressive mandibles in the world. At the moment, she would bet half her legs that he was laughing at them, the smug bastard. She was starting to reconsider their decision, but one glance at Menoly made her decision for her. "We want in."

"Hmm?"

"You said that once you and the feathered menace found a permanent home, you'd consider taking us in. Well, you've been here for decades."

"You did say that, Lord Cameron," Anathi chirped. "Say, how are your quills so soft?" She reached out and scratched Menoly behind her long ears. Now that he paid attention to them, they were abnormally long, almost like a rabbit's.

Menoly sighed, almost deflating visibly as she relaxed under Anathi's ministrations. "I can choose to stand the quills on end or lay them flat," she said.

"Hmm, alright, I think Anathi was getting lonely anyway. I'm going to ferry you one by one up to the surface. Ground rules though. One, if you try to betray me or hurt Anathi, I'll kill you. Two, when you get up, don't try to get down because it's quite a fall. You're going to need help if you want to come back to the forest. Three, we'll start training you and figuring out how to incorporate your hunting styles into an overall strategy. Now, who's first?"

Typical of those who had never left the ground, neither were eager to volunteer. "Alright, I'll take the fat one first, may as well get it over with."

"I'm not fat!" Loly screeched.

"Then why so defensive?" he pointed out. She mumbled something about smug flying bastards but said nothing in reply. "Come on, I'm joking. Now, bunch up into a ball or something. You're long enough to wrap around both Anathi and Menoly twice over."

She did so. After that, he grabbed the bundle of chitin and legs and flew into the hole. Menoly was the most interesting. He could feel her trembling. "Don't like heights?" All she could do was shake her head in terror.

X

Sixty years passed in the blink of an eye. Loly and Menoly, thanks to the latter's acrophobia, decided having a burrow at the base of their tree would be best. Should anyone try to assault their home, they would be the first line of defense. To make up for their relative vulnerability, Cameron suggested several defensive measures around their territory. The two spent several months turning the entire area surrounding the tree into a maze of pitfalls filled with spikes and pools of acid.

Along with Anathi, the three spent most of their time working on coordinating attacks. More than once, Cameron had to dig out quills from Anathi's back when Menoly accidentally fired too soon. Those times usually ended in a free for all among his three subordinates. Loly was the most mobile thanks to her ability to "swim" in the ground and Menoly had the highest defenses for obvious reasons, but Anathi had the unique advantage of knowing their fighting styles intimately. Being moderately mobile and moderately bulky meant she could use her limbs to corral the two, forcing them to get in each other's way. These sparring sessions had several benefits besides simply improving their collective teamwork. Anathi learned to distinguish between the visual cues from reality and the visions she received from her psychometry. Menoly's quills became sharper and although she was the slowest of the three, she had the most reliable ranged attack. Loly took a page from Cameron's book and decided to infuse her natural affinity for acids into a cero. The result was something akin to a cannonball of reiryoku that could be thrown, exploded on impact, and corroded everything in its vicinity. Despite the highly destructive nature of the attack, Cameron rated Menoly as the better long range fighter because the skill was heavily taxing on Loly. She simply didn't have the reserves and control to compress that much acid into a cero without tiring herself out. It was also stupidly slow, making it fairly easy to dodge or counter. Then again, to a supersonic dragonfly with three dimensional movement and perfect spherical vision from hundreds of compound eyes, most attacks appeared slow…

Cameron himself did not sit idle. When he wasn't patrolling the expansive desert or acting as the target in their target practice games, he spent his time trying to develop different techniques. He drew a lot of inspiration from other anime and games, but most of them didn't work quite right. Pokemon's Hurricane for example, became tremendously difficult to create when using the wings of a dragonfly instead of a powerful bird of prey. Similarly, Sonic Boom wasn't something that could be learned as the aftershock of breaking the sound barrier couldn't be directly controlled. Or rather, it could, but it wasn't worth the trouble. Yasuo's Wind Wall from League of Legends was also attempted and thrown out. He could make one… sort of… but it wouldn't block anything significant. He was barely able to stop Menoly's quills, let alone a full powered cero. In hindsight, it was stupid for him to think a widespread current of air would redirect a beam of reiryoku.

Like La Corriente and Aire Cero, his main talent with air lay in compressing and directing it in focused streams, not creating spiralling tornadoes. While those looked impressive, using them required massive amounts of wasted reiryoku. His reserves may have been impressive, but he didn't have enough to change the battlefield in such a way, at least for the moment. Thinking on the matter, it made some sense. Area skills in the Bleach universe belonged to tremendously powerful or genius shinigami, most notably the wielders of Hyorinmaru and Ryujin Jakka. There was also Barragan's Respira, but that just went to prove his hypothesis: Cameron wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to do that… yet. He swore to himself that someday, he would be.

In the meantime, he stuck to air compression and applied that defensively, creating El Chubasco, or Squall. It worked similarly to the Kaiten from Naruto. By compressing and spinning the air around him, he could create a small barrier that could automatically parry ranged projectiles like Menoly's quills. It didn't completely negate a cero, but the split second it took for the cero to break through the barrier was enough for him to move out of the way. It would also force weaker cero to switch trajectory through the intensity of the spinning wind.

X

A woman clad in black fled through the night, desperate to escape her erstwhile comrades. A diamond shaped mask adorned her face. It looked nothing like a traditional hollow's mask, with a visor in the shape of a four-pointed star, but no shinigami could mistake the ominous reiryoku emitting form her in waves. Lieutenant Lisa Yadomaru was horrified with herself, with what she had become. "Shitshitshitshit," she swore, an unbroken string of nonsensical words that mirrored her chaotic mind.

Behind her, she could feel them closing in, the Second Division's stealth corps uniquely suited to hunt down her and her friends. She was a lieutenant for a reason. She trained under Shunsui Kyoraku, one of the oldest and most powerful captains in the Gotei 13. In a one on one scenario, she was confident she could beat any of her pursuers, even two or three on one in a pinch. But they knew this as well. They had no intention of facing her directly. She would be hounded like a wolf pack hounds deer until she simply has no more strength to run. "Fuck," she swore again, "is this how it ends? I'm not going to die like this…" Sometime during the whole fiasco, she had been separated from the rest. Her only hope was that she had led enough of them away for the rest to get away. "Someone… please… save them…"

"Sure, why not," came a flipiant voice. Before her stood none less than Yoruichi Shihoin, the Flash Goddess, Second Division Captain. Any hope of aid or survival died the moment Lisa saw the woman's violet locks.

"Tch, how arrogant, not even carrying your zanpakuto," Lisa spat. She ignored the burning in her muscles and slid into a zanjutsu stance. Despite her bravado, she knew the truth: Yoruichi Shihoin had not needed her zanpakuto in over forty years. Only the most senior captains even knew what it looked like because the woman was famous for punching everything to death. She was, without question, a captain-class fighter with or without a sword and a flea had better chances of jumping to the moon than Lisa did of actually winning.

"Hoh? You still want to fight?" She held out a hand and the rest of the stealth corps knelt around them, prepared to prevent her from leaving, but not stupid enough to jump in. "You got spunk, Lieutenant Yadomaru," she said with her trademark feline smirk. Then, to Lisa's surprise, she waved off her men. "Go search the Rukongai. I heard the rest are headed for the southern districts. I've got this one."

Without so much as a whisper, each of her men gave a short bow and vanished into the wind. She began walking towards Lisa. Her steps bellied a feline grace and even in such a circumstance, Lisa couldn't help the hint of envy that rose within her. Yoruichi had it all: a prestigious family, impeccable grace, predatory instincts, and unmatched speed and technique. She'd rather slit her own throat than go quietly though.

With a low growl, Lisa gambled it all on a single charge. Her sword positively glowed with the reiryoku that infused the blade. It sang through the air and for a moment, as the blade headed for the captain's neck, she allowed herself to hope. Then, the sword swung past Yoruichi's neck without a single drop of blood. 'After image…'

She realized too late. She turned as quickly as she could, but felt a firm hand rest atop her wrists. "Enough," came Yoruichi's uncharacteristically stern voice. With laughable ease, she tripped Lisa, tossing her in a graceful arc. She landed in an undignified heap and shivered as the captain leveled her with a predatory glare.

'Just like a panther,' she thought.

Yoruichi sighed, "What the fuck am I supposed to do with you?" She spun the lieutenant's zanpakuto in one hand while palming her face. "I did say I'd help you, didn't I?"

"You're lying."

"I have no reason to lie. I'm so much stronger than you that anything short of killing you instantly would be unneeded cruelty. Besides, I know that Shinji led your friends to the north. Why would I have sent my men south?" Lisa fell silent. "You have two choices, lieutenant. You can sit idly here and wait for someone else to kill you, or I can help you out."

Let no one say Lisa Yadomaru isn't a pragmatic woman. After only a moment's consideration, she came to the only acceptable decision. "You want to help a monster," she said, awed even while accepting that this was her new reality.

"I guess you're an intelligent hollow. As long as you don't go around murdering shinigami or pluses, you're not my problem. Now, come on."

 **Author's Note**

 **Yep, exciting, I know. Hollow home makeover. Sarcasm aside, some people asked me about the timeline. I am aware that canon events begin in 2001. At the start of the chapter, they are just about around the late 1700s, maybe 1800. The exact year isn't that important. What you should know is that this is even before Aizen's initial experimentation.**

 **I know, Anathi basically has Shirou Emiya's Structural Grasp, except on a wider scale. How useful is this? It's both the strongest and weakest ability. On one hand, it can grant her detailed information about how an opponent fights, any ambushes, or even the special abilities of zanpakuto. On the other hand, it doesn't have any direct combat application. It also loses usefulness if Anathi herself is unable to counter the technique. For example, Ryujin Jakka will still burn her to ash. It doesn't matter that she knows it's coming if she can't do anything about it.**

 **The final scene of Lisa running away only to be saved by Yoruichi is meant to give you an idea of where we are. We're slowly moving towards canon.**

 **Timeline...**

 **\- Anathi is saved by Cameron sometime in the early 1700s.  
\- One week after the incident, Manami and Johan report to Shunsui, creating a dossier on the "intelligent hollow."  
\- 5 years later, Anathi is sold as a slave.  
\- 30 years after that (35 since the incident), Cameron kills Red and becomes a gillian.  
\- 12 years after becoming a gillian, he becomes an adjuchas.  
\- 4 years after becoming an adjuchas, he has pretty much taken over Menos Forest thanks to his unique abilities and speed. He finds Anathi and decides to save her on a whim.  
\- 3 years later, he decides that he's had enough of Menos Forest. He cooks up a plan to "warp evolve" Anathi.  
\- 1 month later, they find and kill the Sage.  
\- 1 month later, Cameron gains a reputation as the Guardian of the West.  
\- 100 years pass. After a quick trek to the human world, Cameron concludes that it's about the start of WWI. **

**Total Time: About 154 years since first meeting Anathi in the human world. This means that it is now the early 1900s. Note that this isn't entirely canonical. Fun fact: Rukia and Hisana die in the human world in 1851. That's how early this is. I've bent a few things, like Kyoraku's ascendance to captain. He and Ukitake become captains roughly 200 years before canon, at around 1801. I had him as captain long before that, when Anathi was still alive. Does it matter? No, not at all.**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.**

 **Pat reon dot com slash Sorre**


	8. Chapter 8

**Preface**

 **Happy Monday! I am officially done with my graduate school capstone project and couldn't be happier. I'll be graduating soon to fulfill my long-held dream… of joining the unemployment line…**

 **Jokes aside, it's a fairly short chapter this week because I've been rather busy with work and school. Being a broke grad student really sucks… Anyway, enjoy.**

 **Chapter 8: Lorde of Sky (Part 1)**

X Flashback: Kisuke and Tessai's Holding Cell X

"THEY WHAT?" Few had ever seen the captain of the Stealth Corps shout, or show any emotion beyond perpetual, feline amusement. That number rose considerably.

Yoruichi Shihouin was _livid._ Never had her training failed her, but never had come. Two of her dearest friends were charged with treason and would be the subjects of the greatest scandal in memory. Before her, the hell butterfly in question trembled from the abnormal fluctuations in her spirit pressure.

'Nononono,' she thought, 'they can't. They wouldn't.' She, as with all active captains and lieutenants, were to attend the trial immediately. 'How? Turn shinigami into hollows? What the fuck?'

With a heavy heart, Yoruichi sent the hell butterfly to find her lieutenant. "No," she murmured to herself. "If anyone's smart enough to pull that shit off, it's Kisuke, but it's not his style… I-I need answers…"

X Holding Cells X

The captains and lieutenants who were experimented upon were still very much in recovery, barely in any condition to fight off academy students, never mind seated officers. Still, the pale masks that covered their heads filled their guards with a mix of disgust and awe, a gnawing fear that refused to abate. They were so caught up in watching their captives for signs of aggression that not one of them noticed a black cat slink into the room.

Quickly, too fast for any of these officers to see, the cat flashed around the room, brushing her tail delicately against the socks of the guards. If examined closely, a good poison specialist might notice a shimmer of liquid that seeped into the cloth and skin, slowly weakening the victims. Within the hour, the guards were barely capable of standing, paralyzed from the waist down, while their captives had recovered enough to subdue them. By then, all the captains and lieutenants would be occupied in the trial of the millenium, the mysterious black cat nowhere to be found.

X Central 46 X

The main hall of Soul Society's ruling government was surprisingly dark, a dimly lit circular expanse with tiered seating. Each of the forty-six members, forty noble heads and six judges, surrounded two men: Kisuke Urahara and Tessai Tsukabishi, captains of Twelfth Division and the Kido Corps. Around the hall, standing at attention, were all other captains and lieutenants, alert for any signs of treachery.

"Tch, what a farce," the bloodthirsty captain of Eleventh Division snarled, "They should just let me kill 'em or let me leave."

"Silence," the Captain Commander said. A single word that sent shivers down everyone's backs with the force of his authority and quelled even the Kenpachi.

"It's not often that a captain is tried for treason, never mind two," Jushiro Ukitake reasoned, "It's natural for us all to stand as witnesses." His words were clinical, but the white haired man appeared genuinely concerned. He didn't interact much with either men, but Ukitake had never been one to enjoy the suffering of others.

Off to the side, next to one of the few windows letting light into the room, the Second Division Captain leaned against the wall. Her lieutenant, Marenoshin Omaeda, stared worriedly at his captain. Yoruichi's expression betrayed nothing. The violet haired assassin was as beautiful as ever, her dusky complexion and yellow eyes fading into the shadow cast by the window perfectly, but her trademark smirk was absent. He had seen that face before countless times; it was the expression he privately labeled his captain's "killing face," the face she made she carried out her most gruesome assassinations.

One of the six judges, an old man who looked gnarled enough to be made of tree bark, stood and brought the room to order. "Kisuke Urahara, Tessai Tsukabishi, you are here today accused of conducting forbidden experiments on your fellow captains and lieutenants. You were found at the scene of the crime; know that there is no doubt as to your guilt. Admit to your wrongs and may the Soul King grant his mercy in your next lives-"

He took a breath to continue, but was interrupted when a messenger burst through the door. "Noble heads! Captain Commander! They've escaped!" he panted, gasping for air until he was barely understandable. Yet, no one in the room needed any clue as to who "they" were.

Yamamoto took a single step forward, his cane slamming against the floor before chaos could reign. "Captain Shihoin! Take your best and intercept them! Lieutenant Omaeda will sit in your place as witness. Go!" he barked.

X

She had no idea where they'd gone, so she split her division to scan the Seireitei. One of them had returned, letting her know that they had split up. In turn, she divided her division further and sent them into the Rukongai.

Only fifteen minutes later, she felt a brief spike of reiryoku, subtle enough to go unnoticed by most. She arrived in the northern districts to see four of her men subdued, bleeding and unconscious but not dead. A subtle hint of reiryoku pointed northwest. 'They had enough presence of mind to leave my men alive. No, if they were fully hollows, they would have fed on the reiryoku.' She bit her thumb, drawing blood, a band habit from her younger days. 'Fuck, just what's going on here? Kisuke you owe me for this…'

A massive flare of reiryoku summoned her men to her. "Go, they turned east from here," she said, betraying nothing. "I'm going to hunt down the one that split away."

When she found the former lieutenant, Lisa Yadomaru was fleeing desperately from more of her men. "Someone… please… save them…" she heard her say.

In a flash, she was before the fleeing hybrid, feline smirk masking her turbulent emotions. "Sure, why not?"

X Central 46 X

A black cat lounged just below the windowsill, outside the main hall of Central 46. She was close enough to hear, but not enough to be noticed. "Now, this august body finds you both guilty against the laws set by the Soul King. On his majesty's behalf, we sentence you to death. Your sentence shall be carried out in full view of all shinigami tomorrow at dawn. Until that time, you shall be held in the Maggot's Nest. Lieutenant Omaeda!"

"S-Sir!"

"In lieu of your captain, you and your third seat shall escort these prisoners to the Maggot's Nest and guard them."

"Yes, sir!"

With that, the trial came to an end. Yoruichi slunk deeper into the shadows and watched each of the captains take their exits. When her lieutenant dragged her friends out, she followed at a distance. Once they were far enough away from the others, she struck, a rapid strike the the neck, temple, kidney, and diaphragm took out her lieutenant instantly.

"Yo, Little Bee," she grinned, teasingly.

"L-Lady Yoruichi!"

"Mind giving me my idiot friends? I'd like to hear from their own mouths just what the fuck they've done."

"Ara, I assure you we are only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," Kisuke shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with his situation.

"Maybe, but I expect a hell of a good explanation for this, Kisuke." The smile on her face didn't fade, but promised a world of agony.

Soifon realized what her mentor was planning and took a defensive stance. "Lady Yoruichi, please reconsider," she pleaded. "You don't have to throw your life away like this."

Her smile cracked. It hurt, seeing her disciple plead with her. "No, I don't, Little Bee," she agreed in a moment of solemnness. "I will though. I need to know." With that, she vanished in a flash. Even Soifon, for all her training, saw only a blur before darkness encroached upon the edges of her vision. "I'm sorry, Little Bee," she heard before she lost consciousness.

X Flashback End: Hueco Mundo X

"It's amazing," the hedgehog muttered as she gazed across the expansive desert. She was clutched in the arms of her lord, the dragonfly adjusting every now and then to make sure her quills stayed flat against his hierro. The eternal night of Hueco Mundo's desert was beautiful in its own way, the darkness providing a clear contrast for the pale moon, the singular source of light in this world. The moonlight reflected on the white sand and Menoly Mallia marveled at a view she had never seen before.

Over the course of the century spent under their new master, both Loly and Menoly had grown to appreciate flying, though they were never as comfortable with the sensation of weightlessness as Anathi. It emerged as one of the few recreational activities available to them and the three took turns as permitted by their lord.

"It is, isn't it?" Cameron smiled as far as his chitinous lips would allow. He grumbled good-naturedly that he was more horse than lord, but this view, this one moment of serene grace in their world of perpetual slaughter, was one he was happy to share.

Their moment of peace was disturbed by a weight of incredible pressure in the horizon. It approached like the unstoppable flow of a river, cascading towards their home. Wordlessly, they swerved back towards the quartz tree.

Loly and Anathi met them there, already prepared to defend their home from this new enemy. "L-Lord Cameron, what the hell's going on? Who is that?" Loly shouted even as she began to prepare an orb of condensed acid and reiryoku in her foremost limbs. Next to her, Anathi sank low to the earth, digging into the sand and all but vanishing from sight. Her smooth feathers would allow her to navigate while her clawed flippers could strike from below.

Although they appeared ready to fight, Cameron could feel the air practically dance around them from their trembling. This creature couldn't even be seen from the ground and already the reiryoku in the air was stifling. Slowly, their opponent came into view.

'No,' Cameron realized, 'not opponent, _opponents.'_

Two beings were walking side by side, one a short, young girl and the other an older man with a scruffy beard. Slowly, the two came to a stop a fair distance away from the treehollow. Despite that, the natural pressure they were giving off almost drove all but Cameron into the ground.

Cameron was caught between squealing like a fanboy and flying out of there. 'Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit that's Coyote mother-fucking Starrk!' The pressure weighed on him as well, but unlike his subordinates, he flared his own reiryoku and found that he was just strong enough to oppose them locally. Even then, he had no delusions about his ability to stop them should they get serious. 'So this is an arrancar,' he thought. 'No, not all arrancar are this strong, not even close. This… this is what it means to have become a vasto lorde.'

Before Cameron could open his mouth, it was Starrk who spoke first. "You… you are not dying," he mused as though the very idea of someone not suffocating to death from their presence as a novel thing. To be fair, for them, it was. "You are strong…"

"I am, but not as strong as you. You and the girl are one and the same. Why?" He returned, his tone as respectful as possible. Sure, Coyote Starrk would become known as the most lethargic of all the espada, but he was still a hollow. Antagonizing him would be suicidally stupid.

"We are strong… so we were lonely…"

"You split your soul," Cameron gasped as though struck with sudden realization. "Were you so desperate for a companion?"

A single nod. Behind him, Lilynette shuffled shyly, all signs of her future abrasive personality absent.

"Join us."

"No," came Cameron's flat reply. "Or, rather, not now."

"... Explain…"

Cameron took a breath, his four wings buzzing restlessly. Swallowing his trepidation, he walked forward until he was face to face with Starrk. "My subordinates are my family. I will not leave them. One day, they too will be strong enough to stand before you. At that time, I will be strong enough to call you friend. This is my promise, arrancar. Go now with a promise that we will meet again."

The three adjuchas waited with bated breath until Starrk nodded purposefully. "Very well… friend…" Slowly, two of the strongest beings in Hueco Mundo turned and walked away.

X

Over the next twenty years, Cameron refined his La Corriente and El Chubasco. The techniques themselves were not difficult, but La Corriente created some problems as side effects. La Corriente involved creating a "road" of wind, a tunnel through which he could fly without friction and in permanent state of acceleration. In theory, the move would allow him to outstrip even the Flash Goddess in speed, assuming the "road" would be uninterrupted. Already, he could easily exceed the sound barrier, though it was difficult to measure his speed after that point due to a lack of technical equipment or expertise.

The hard part of La Corriente was not the skill itself, but keeping his focus while the skill was active. Dragonflies, as a rule, possessed phenomenal kinetic vision and that was only improved upon by his status as an adjuchas. However, there were limits and after ten seconds of constant acceleration, well past the sound barrier, he could feel even his vision start to fail him. His solution was simple yet complex: Pour reiryoku into his eyes and adapt. In a way, hollows were especially suited to the adaption process. If Shinigami could reinforce themselves with reiryoku to use shunpo and hakuda techniques, reinforcing his senses should also be possible. So, over twenty years, his vision developed to be his most powerful trait.

El Chubasco was simpler to train. It involved condensing the air around him using his reiryoku, creating a vortex of wind that deflected ranged attacks. Because few things had a density lighter than air, he could theoretically condense the air and rotate it almost without limit. By having his three subordinates fire streams of cero into his guard, he got good enough that he was confident it could stand against even decently powerful kido. Even Loly's acidic variant would simply disperse, melting the area around the sphere, but failing to reach him.

Upon release, the damage it caused to his surroundings was as devastating as it was indiscriminate. He had named it "Squall" for good reason: It was explosive. Without him to hold the leash,the skill was like a category five hurricane condensed to the volume of a small garage. It would expand rapidly, the rotating winds buffeting the surroundings like invisible hammers. His goal was to turn those hammers into precise blades, but had the funny feeling that his control would never be good enough so long as he remained an adjuchas.

Regardless of that cap, he made a point to regularly spar with his new family, a three against one that left them feeling woefully inadequate. They were improving though, and that was all he could ask for. To make it fair, he handicapped himself. He would fly no higher than a third of the way up their tree. He would fly no farther than twenty meters from his grounded minions.

"Sit. Still," growled a frustrated Menoly, a barrage of quills only just missing his wings.

Buzzing by, he clipped her hind leg with his horn, not enough to do real damage, but enough to sting painfully. "Now what would the point of sitting still be?' he chuckled as he flew past, narrowly dodging a pair of vicious claws that surged up from the desert sands. The feathered appendages tried to give chase, only to get tangled amidst Menoly's quills.

"Damn it!" Anathi cried. "Sorry!"

He gasped mockingly as he flew by. "Analthi! Who taught you to swear?"

"Blame Loly," she spat back before a cero shot towards him.

Cameron rose above it, but had to dodge out of the way as Loly extended her body towards the sky, jaws reaching for a bite. "Don't blame me, fuzzball!"

"Less bickering, more trying to hit me." Cameron curled his tail and, creating a platform of hardened air to brace against, launched himself. He tucked in his wings and allowed the momentum of his flight to do the work, sending him neatly between her pincers with room to spare.

He decided that he'd given them enough chances to hit him and flew up to the edge of their "arena." He circled the designated area and began to pick up speed. With each lap around, his tail began to glow a royal navy blue, leaving a stream of azure orbs suspended in the air. "Dodge," he said. With a flick of his forelimb, each sphere erupted into half a dozen bala, not strong enough to deal serious damage, but more than enough to leave a sore spot.

It wasn't so much a technique unique to him so he didn't bother naming it. Bala was a basic skill among higher tier adjuchas and above and his use here was a tactic born of necessity. He found his singular, bladed horn to be the most convenient focus for reiryoku based attacks. Aire Cero was charged from that point. No matter his preference, it wasn't physically possible to use his horn while moving as quickly as he was. After reaching a certain speed, he would move faster than his own cero, running into it and dispersing the attack in a pointless waste of energy. The easy fix to this was simply to focus his attacks from his tail. For the moment, he could only manage balas with the uncomfortable arrangement, but it would suffice.

Cameron whistled through his mandibles as he saw his adorable minions panic at the sight of hundreds of reiryoku bullets. None of them were very powerful, but the sight of so many attacks simultaneously was a bit daunting. 'Heh, I identify as an apache helicopter.' Menoly immediately curled into a ball, needle sharp spines pointing every which way and shielding her from the worst of the barrage. Loly didn't have that option, so weaved like a reed in a storm, bending in undulating waves to minimize the damage. Her carapace just wasn't hard enough to tank the whole thing head on. 'For that matter, I doubt Menoly's hierro is either. She'll be hurting for a few days,' he thought. Every time she tried to retreat underground, he lashed out with a drastically weakened Aire Cero just head of where her head would be in her dive.

Anathi, Anathi seemed to be having fun. Her smooth feathers, reminiscent of a true penguin, caused reiryoku based attacks to slide right off, much like water. It was possible to break through, if the attack was placed against the grain of her feathers, or if it was concentrated enough, but something like the bala wouldn't be strong enough. She zipped through the concentrated fire, yipping in glee while "surfing" the waves of reiryoku released. She slid mostly on her stomach, knocked one way then another, but never harmed. Loly and Menoly looked rather put out by their giggling teammate.

Her eyes sharpened as she slipped between the two taking a distinct, focused air that wasn't there previously. Her flippers shot out, hooking them and dragging them behind her. She winced a little at the prickling sensation of Menoly's spines, but continued with her plan. She twisted her body in a corkscrew motion, riding a particularly large blast and using the momentum to dig herself a tunnel. The two adjuchas barely had time to squawk in surprise before being sucked into the newly made gap with a disconcerting slurping noise. He did the dragonfly equivalent of a blink; he honestly hadn't expected that.

"Hmm… Anathi really likes to play up her immaturity, doesn't she?" Cameron muttered aloud. "It's a good plan, though it really only works on me. I really should stop enabling this…" He considered a wide area cero to blast them out of their hiding place, but held back. "Three minutes," he told himself, "they get three minutes to plan then I blow them outta there."

Three minutes later, just as he was getting ready to smoke them out, he dove to the side to evade Anathi's twin flippers, her claws reaching out like the tips of a trident to skewer him. He ducked below, but had to cut his descent short in favor of swerving to the left to evade a barrage of quills from Menoly. While not nearly as powerful as a cero, her quills could be fired much faster. He'd compare it to bala, but bala exploded whereas the quills pierced.

'They're herding me,' he realized with a smile. It was the most basic tactic, so primitive that he'd hesitate to call it a tactic at all. If someone is more mobile than you, you should limit their mobility. 'Let's play along…'

A mere instant after his decision, he had to ascend rapidly to evade a massive centipede that burst from the sand. She missed, only just managing to brush his hind legs, but smirked. Her tail sprouted a little ways away and launched an acidic cero towards him. Behind him, his eyes spotted Anathi's claws flanking him. They were positioned so that they made a sort of spoon above him in an effort to keep him from lifting up. Menoly launched another hail of quills just beneath him to cut off that avenue of retreat as well.

"Not good enough! La Corriente!" he shouted. Time slowed down. Or rather, his perception of time slowed as his own movements were enhanced to their uppermost limit. He felt the familiar cloak of wind envelop him, forming a tunnel of wind that shot straight for the acid ball, only to curve at a near right angle then slant forward towards Loly. An instant later, he flew along that road, like a demented train on an ever-changing track.

"Shit!" Loly managed to cry out before his horn sheared through four of her legs. She grit through the pain and used her own body to knock him aside, momentarily disrupting La Corriente.

His eyes widened comically. Anathi's feathered flippers had "caught" the acid ball and rolled it around, using her feathers as a makeshift track of its own to redirect the blast towards him. If he didn't have a full 360 degree field of vision, he would never have noticed. So, he pretended he didn't and didn't bother to dodge. "El Chubasco!" he called, and the remnant winds of his earlier technique were sucked back around him, forming a sphere of hardened air.

Loly's unique cero splashed against the wind wall, the acid freed from its reiryoku shell and scattered every which way. He smirked and with a flick of his tail, released the compressed air.

Loly, closest to the point of detonation, was shoved flat against the sand, bruised and moaning in pain. Menoly had moved to reinforce her friend, but was bodily lifted into the air and slammed back down, only to have several more hammers of wind fling her around. Anathi twisted, sliding through most of the blast, but was caught unawares by a quick cero to the stomach. He watched his minions nurse their wounds for a minute before floating down, gently alighting on the desert sand.

"Now, what have we learned?"

"That you're a horrible, abusive master," Anathi sniffed as she gingerly poked at her bruised tummy. Even while most of the reiryoku was dispersed, it struck with a big enough impact to smart.

"Seriously, Lord Cameron, you cut off my legs," whined Loly. She was curled into a spiral. Looking from above, she resembled a nautilus or an ammonite. Beside her, Menoly only gave a displeased groan.

"I'm only hard on you because you're growing stronger," he said kindly, "When we first started, you'd never have thought to redirect Loly's cero back at me using Anathi's feathers. Whose idea was that?" Loly and Menoly jointly pointed at Anathi. She shuffled awkwardly, unsure of what to do with the praise. "See? You're getting better as a team and your individual power levels are starting to rise noticeably. I would never have detonated El Chubasco so close to you all otherwise."

"You still suck," Loly grumbled.

"Fine, fine," he sighed before picking them up and ferrying them inside the treehollow one by one. There, the four fed on a host of corpses, hollows they had killed, but didn't eat for just this purpose. The beauty of a world made of reishi was that nothing truly rotted. Eventually, a slain hollow's corpse would disperse into the surroundings, but that was a fairly slow process dependent upon the strength of the hollow in question. The stronger the hollow, the more condensed its reiryoku reserves, and slower its dispersion rate after death.

As they ate, the three girls bickered over who would sit next to him or who got the most comfortable spots in the treehollow. He watched them with a smile on his face; like this, they reminded him of three sisters, arguing over the most insignificant things.

He jolted as he felt another presence at the edge of his sensory range. Even during his time in Menos Forest, his range had never been particularly large or precise, he wouldn't have had so much trouble with Red otherwise. That he could notice another hollow from so far away was disconcerting. It was unlike Starrk and Lilynette, theirs was the unsurmountable power of an entire mountain weighing upon everything in sight. No, this time, the very air seemed to whisper into his ears, warning him of another wind type.

He grinned, perhaps an appropriate challenge had shown itself.

 **Author's Note**

 **Note that at this time, Omaeda Sr. was lieutenant, not the incompetent idiot that is Soifon's tagalong. The Second Division is in charge of the Maggot's Nest and Yoruichi's absence means the duty of escorting prisoners to the prison defaults to Omaeda Sr.**

 **Some of you pointed out that Lisa Yadomaru was not in fact saved by Yoruichi, or at least, that it was never shown in canon if it happened. I'll admit that my understanding of Bleach canon is a bit iffy, partly because Kubo is horrible with his timeline and partly because the exact details don't really interest me, but my interpretation is thus:**

 **Aizen conducts his experiments**

 **Kisuke and Tessai try to reverse the hollowfication process but fails, is found at the scene of the crime, and framed by Aizen**

 **The trial of a captain is not something to be taken lightly,the trial of _two_ captains even more so, and all of Central 46, as well as the other captains and lieutenants, are there for their court martial**

 **Yoruichi, seeing this opportunity, uses her bullshit stealth arts to poison and weaken the guards, giving the Vizored the opportunity to escape**

 **Yoruichi attends the court martial as the Second Division Captain to set up her own alibi**

 **During the trial, a messenger arrives to let the captains know that the Vizored have escaped and Yoruichi, as the fastest, is sent to intercept**

 **She takes this chance to mislead her division and allow Lisa to flee and rejoin the others**

 **She abandons the chase and returns to Central 46, choosing to free Kisuke and Tessai and hear their explanation before they can be placed in secure confinement**

 **The sentence is passed and the captains exit one by one. Omaeda, as the Second Division Lieutenant, is charged with taking the prisoners to the Maggot's Nest as his captain is supposed to be occupied chasing the Vizored**

 **Soifon joins him because she doesn't trust his competence**

 **In transit, Yoruichi intercepts, beating both Omaeda and Soifon and flees with the prisoners**

 **AHHHHH A wild Starrk appears! Note that in canon, Starrk actually split his soul before meeting Aizen. He(she… they?) became an arrancar without help from the hogyoku. Did you expect Cameron to fight him? Sure, that might make for an awesome action scene, but Cameron isn't Grimmjow. He's not an idiot and if he's willing to dodge a fight with Grimmjow, he'd definitely go out of his way to avoid one with Starrk. That promise though, to make his subordinates strong enough to stand with Starrk too...**

 **I'll admit, this chapter is a little short, and was mainly to shore up some of the questions I'd received about the hollowfication incident while developing Anathi, Loly, and Menoly's characters a bit more. Anathi is a little immature because she hasn't had a reason to really take on an adult persona in all the decades the two have been together. Keep in mind, Loly and Menoly are the first friends she's ever had, Cameron excluded. Beneath that childishness though, is still a woman who's survived for decades in Hueco Mundo and has been taught tactics by Cameron. Is Cameron some tactical genius? No, not when compared to many in the human world or the older shinigami. But compared to other hollows? At least he knows about Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Thucydides, whereas other hollows primarily run on instinct or a desire to fill the "void" like Nel or Harribel.**

 **You can consider this a chapter meant to transition into canon while flushing out his skillset.**

 **The time is now roughly the early 1930s.**

 **As always, constructive feedback is appreciated. If you would like a more in-depth explanation of something, let me know. If you would like to support my work please find me at Pat reon dot com slash Sorre.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Preface**

 **Woot! Chapter nine is finally here. It was a bit hard to write so I decided to break it apart a bit. Happy Monday everyone.**

 **Chapter 9: Lorde of Sky (Part 2)**

The sky whispered to Camperon. 'Someone's coming,' he thought. He knew, even as far off as they were, that they also reigned over the air. "Anathi, Loly, Menoly," he barked, "Get inside. Get inside and don't come out. You won't be much help here."

He felt a pang of guilt at their hurt expressions, but this wasn't the time for egos. The approaching hollow was strong, pressing down upon the sky like a massive cold front. Sure, they had nothing on Starrk, but that's the equivalent of saying a blowtorch is lukewarm compared to the sun. Irrelevant, it'd still burn. After forcing them inside the treehollow, the great dragonfly rustled his wings free, spreading them out to their full twenty-four feet wingspan. Slowly at first, they beat until the very air sizzled with their passing. As he arose, he answered the opposing adjuchas' challenge by letting out his own reiryoku in a burst of heavy reishi.

Cameron's spirit filled the sky like a thick blanket. If the approaching adjuchas could be called a cold front, he was the mounting storm, a hurricane rapidly crossing the border into category five and beyond. All around, for miles, those hollows attuned to the air or capable of sensing reiatsu took note. At this point, with over a century spent with that treehollow as the center of his territory, the Guardian of the West's reiatsu was well-known. Lesser hollows in Menos Forest could only speak in hushed tones about the Whispering Death, but there were several adjuchas capable of sensing his presence. At the very least, they would know he was near.

Never had they known the sky to _quiver_.

Ripples upon ripples distorted the cloudless night of Las Noches, bending the normally implacable winds into ever-turbulent spirals. If any nearby adjuchas were of the mind to approach the center, they would have found the brewing storm intensify exponentially. At the outer edges, the air current only carried the slight tang of Cameron's reiatsu. That trickle became a spiraling stream and that stream would turn into a massive hammer, endlessly buffeting anything and everything that dared approach. The desert world of Las Noches, normally bearing the veneer of peace, was torn asunder, a swirling cloud of sand and bone fragments whipping around the eye of the storm, threatening to rend the world to pieces.

At its center hovered Cameron, hovering in the air and commanding El Chubasco with far more effort than he normally spared for during his spars. For once, the technique lived up to its name: The Whisper had become a Squall.

X

Cameron's challenger seemed to be a cassowary with functional wings. It soared on one of El Chubasco's many currents, gracefully gliding through the air in a way that wouldn't have been amiss on a vulture or condor. It stared with pitch black eyes overshadowed by the heavy bone mask, a mask that ended in a wickedly hooked beak. At the base of its neck were four more masks arranged in an "X" pattern with the main head sprouting from its center. The bone armor extended to the first joint of its wings, encasing the upper limbs in blunt shells to fend off direct attacks. It also extended down from the adjuchas' back to its legs, legs that looked to be heavily muscled and covered in more armor than medieval heavy knights could dream of.

"Hello, adjuchas," Cameron started. He realized that he was likely being analyzed in the same way he had been analyzing his opponent.

"Dordoni… I am called Dordoni Alessandro del Socaccio. What is your name, boy?"

'Dordoni… Dordoni… I think I'd remember a weird name like that, but all the arrancar had weird names…' It struck him like lightning. 'Oh shit, extra masks. Bird. Strong kicking feet. He's Ichigo's first challenge! Hmm… weren't all the Espada supposed to be vasto lordes? No… I think it was only the first four or something… That's good it means he sure as hell isn't one.'

"I asked your name, boy," the avian hollow said with more agitation.

Cameron started, though he made no external show of it. "Oh? Sorry, I was lost in thought. I am called Cameron Gold. Now, why have you marched so brazenly into someone else's territory?" 'He was described as being pretty arrogant if I remember right. Arrogant, but honorable. If that's true, he probably hates being ignored.'

Dordoni puffed his feathers, his reiatsu spiking with the vain motion. Cameron gave a mental eye-roll and shrugged it off. "Ha! I knew it, boy! You are strong. Join me."

'First Starrk and now this clown? What is with this place? Someone clearly wants me to fuck up canon.' "I am content with my territory, Dordoni. Why have you not claimed another part of the desert as your own? You are certainly strong enough to do so."

He visibly preened. "We are flying hollows, boy. We have no need for territory for our territory is the very heavens. Why should I bind myself to the earth?"

"Fair point," he replied, "Very well. What do you hope to accomplish if I join you?"

"I will be the strongest! I, Dordoni, am meant to stand atop the heavens and rule over all Hueco Mundo, the children of the sky at my back." He let out an uproarious laugh.

'Yep, at least he's as arrogant as he was in canon. He wanted to become an espada again after getting kicked off I believe. Like this idiot is going to match Starrk anytime soon.' "I refuse," Cameron said flatly, cutting off his laughter. Dordoni stared in disbelief even as Cameron sighed in exasperation. "Answer me this, Dordoni: What makes you the rightful ruler of Hueco Mundo?"

His beak spread to split his face in a mad grin. "Look around, boy. We already soar above the masses. Is it not my right to claim the world?"

'I hate the arrogant types,' Cameron thought to himself. Dordoni, despite being the "most likable" privaron and somewhat honorable in his own twisted way, he was so arrogant that he was incapable of considering the worldview of another. "I still refuse," Cameron said. "I don't deny that flight makes us special, but unlike you, I have no desire to rule over the landed hollows. Leave."

"If you will not join me, boy, then you will nourish my rule," he warned, his claws grasping threateningly.

"So be it then."

X

"Are they going to fight?" Menoly asked even as the three adjuchas sat atop the treehollow, peering out from within.

Loly let loose a distinctly unladylike snort. "Of course they are. What else do strong hollows do?"

"Lord Cameron didn't fight that Starrk person," her best friend pointed out.

"But they'll fight now," Anathi said simply. "The intruder is grasping, ready to claw Lord Cameron."

"Will he be okay?" Menoly shuddered involuntarily. Despite being trained by the powerful dragonfly, the sheer weight of the reiatsu released into the air by the two adjuchas was enough to take her aback, a testament to the difference between her and her master. Next to her, the others held themselves better.

"Of course he'll win," Anathi said, the confidence only a daughter can have for her father figure.

"Y-Yeah…"

X

Dordoni's first attack came in the form of a vicious thrust with his beak. His massive wingspan and bulky masks would indicate a slower, cruising bird of prey, akin to a vulture or eagle. If Cameron expected a slower attack, he made no show of it and dodged the lunging beak with casual ease. 'He's a bit like Anathi,' Cameron thought, 'His body is slow but his neck extends like her arms. Easy enough.'

Another lunge. Another dodge. No currents to guide him, just the speed of Cameron's more compact frame and the four wings that makes a dragonfly the best aviator in its weight class in the wild. He hovered like a helicopter, wings beating so quickly that they appeared to not exist, leaving only transparent space where they normally vibrated in multiple hues. Unlike with the Sage a century ago, there were no trees to get in the way, no canopy to limit his flight.

"You dodge well," Dordoni said with all the haughtiness of a knight complimenting a squire.

"Or, perhaps you're just slow," Cameron drawled. "You can't seriously expect to rule Hueco Mundo with just this."

He shook his head. "No, no I do not, boy. I wished to keep you alive that you might join me."

"If you're so insistent on it, prove yourself."

"As you wish." The vulture-like adjuchas' reiatsu spiked once again. Each of the four masks he wore began to stir. The air around him turned a sky blue as it was saturated with his reiryoku, similar to Cameron's own navy-blue Aire Cero. One by one, the masks rose into the air and Cameron noted absently that this would have been the privaron's resurreccion in canon. Each of the five heads grinned maliciously. "So, boy, shall we begin?"

This time, when Dordoni's wicked beak scythed through the air, Cameron lowered his altitude, allowing the attack to pass safely above. He had to quickly change his trajectory to avoid another beak, the azure gale nearly clipping his tail in his passing. Swerving left, he narrowly evaded two more before rising upwards. The five heads followed, tracking him with their eyes and encircling him in a shrinking trap.

'Alright, enough of this shit,' Cameron grumbled before he envisioned a corridor of wind, a cyclone spinning inwards and paving the way for him. "La Corriente," he whispered before vanishing in a flicker. He reappeared again, seemingly at random, only to disappear into thin air. Each time, he left behind a small sphere of reiryoku.

Dordoni's cyclone heads swung wildly, occasionally spotting the much quicker hollow, but unable to react meaningfully. "You are like a mosquito!" he roared. Enraged as he was, he had enough caution to avoid directly touching the small orbs.

"Thanks," Cameron said as he buzzed above his opponent. "Flies and mosquitoes are not fast, but they still manage to avoid the eyes by turning in unpredictable movements. Imagine what would happen if someone who's actually fast could pull it off?" An irritated growl was his only answer. "No? Well fine then." With a flick of his tail, every sphere he'd left behind converged in a rain of bala.

"Gaah!" Dordoni roared in pain, but the excess reishi particles were blasted aside with a large cyclone. One cyclone became five, spinning at high enough speeds to make the air thrum with his reiatsu. Aesthetically, the only true difference was that the "necks" of the four pseudo-heads appeared a more vibrant blue. "That was a neat trick, boy, but it won't work anymore."

"What're you talking about?" Cameron asked as he zipped towards his opponent in a blistering charge. He made it halfway there but La Corriente suddenly petered out, forcing him to make a desperate dive to avoid a retaliatory cero. Still, the attack struck his tail and only the dense winds of El Chubasco kept him from losing it. "Oww… How the hell did you…"

Cameron saw the vicious smirk on Dordoni's face and didn't even bother finishing the question. He wouldn't tell his opponent how his technique was stopped if their positions were reversed and he'd assume Dordoni wasn't as big a moron as Kubo depicted him as in canon. He rose quickly to escape two pecking beaks and backtracked.

Moving backwards, La Corriente seemed to work fine, but with every metaphorical step forward, the currents diminished until he was forced to retreat once more. It took only a moment more for him to notice what's been going on. There, close to the base of the vulture's neck, the four cyclones spun in opposite directions, creating a series of crosswinds that left little to no air within. "Well, fuck," he muttered, "That's fine. I don't need to rush you to spear you. Aire Cero!"

An ominous beam of navy-blue pierced straight through one of the masks and the neck of another head. Dordoni grit his teeth and kicked upwards, matching the beam with a reiryoku infused slash from his talons. "Raah!" he screamed as the drill of air tore through his claws, vaporizing them even as his hierro resisted the tugging sensation of the inward-flowing whirlwind that surrounded the cero. He sacrificed his foot, but bought himself enough time to duck out of range.

"Kuh, that hurt, boy. You're the first to hurt me so much so quickly," Dordoni grunted in pain as he checked his mangled foot. Two of the four talons were ripped cleanly off, along with the bone-plated toes, and a third was dangling by a single thread of flesh.

He snorted. "If I'm what you consider strong, you sure as hell won't manage conquering Hueco Mundo, Dordoni. Still, you're the only one who's ever survived that to date so congratulations, I suppose." Cameron didn't give him the chance to banter back, ripping forward in another slipstream of La Corriente. He neared Dordoni and felt the winds diminish, but running him through wasn't the objective. He stopped rapidly and released the dense armor of air from El Chubasco outwards. The pseudo-vacuum created by Dordoni's many heads being so close to one another did nothing to keep the pocket of air Cameron already "possessed" from his sole defensive technique. When he chose to release it explosively, the lack of air pressure in the surrounding atmosphere only made the technique more deadly.

The blast threw him back with the force of a dozen sledgehammers while simultaneously scattering the winds that made up Dordoni's auxiliary heads. Cameron used that disorientation to reactivate La Corriente and run through his opponent. Even while dazed, Dordoni managed to bring his left wing before his torso and slap away the missile of wind and hollow. "Nnngh!" Through the wind, the sound of tearing flesh and pained groans filled the air. He wasn't going to be flying quickly anytime soon.

Dordoni flung a bala in retaliation, but such a hasty attack sailed wide.

"Heh, where are you aiming, Dordoni?" Cameron taunted and got ready for one final blast to finish his opponent.

Subtly, the winds began to pick back up, swirling in four tendrils to reconstruct the missing heads. Instead of fully manifesting the four heads, he left them as vague wisps of light blue reiryoku and funneled all his spare reiryoku into the beaks. A moment later, four cero, albeit weakened, caught Cameron by surprise in the crossfire.

"Arrrggh!" Cameron screamed as his scorched body plummeted towards the earth.

X

"""Lord Cameron!""" three hollows cried out from their perch, unable to fly to their master's side. They breathed a collective sigh of relief when the figure of the dragonfly corrected his position in mid air to swoop down into a parabolic arc, only just avoiding crashing into the sand.

Then, they heard a shout of "La Corriente!" before he vanished, the sonic boom rattling their bones. Only the trail of sand and dust kicked up by the intense slipstream pointed to where he'd gone.

X

Cameron's breath caught in his throat as he sank towards the earth. The world seemed to slow down even as the desert floor loomed ever closer. 'Shit… he can fire cero from his heads… Of course he can. If you can fire bala from bits of leftover reiryoku in your flight path, he can sure as hell fire multiple cero,' he scolded himself. The truth was that it should have been obvious. The pale-blue cyclones that made up Dordoni's necks were funnels of wind saturated with his reiryoku. It should have been obvious, but they were basically conduits that he used to levitate his extra masks. It should have been obvious and he was so caught up in the success of a simple plan that he lost himself in the moment.

'Fuck, Cameron, get it together. You have a perfect spherical visual range for fuck's sake.' As the ground neared, he roared the name of his most used technique and disappeared in a sonic boom that roused the desert into yet another sandstorm.

"Alright, enough games. New plan." Cameron muttered to himself as he shot straight into the sky. Dordoni tried to dodge with a swift sonido, but he was never Cameron's target. The vulture blinked in surprise as the dragonfly shot past with a massive sonic boom, barely a blur even to the powerful adjuchas' eyes.

He tried to rise to meet his opponent, but winced in pain. His tattered left wing would not let him rise to such heights. He could only look on as the dragonfly called Cameron Gold shattered the sound barrier for the third time in as many seconds.

From above, with his full attention back on his opponent, Cameron could see the shrinking visage of the future privaron. He let out a triumphant whoop even as his reiatsu spiked to unprecedented levels. He allowed himself a small smirk when he saw Dordoni's eyes widen in shock.

Cameron whipped the air around him with a mix of El Chubasco and La Corriente, circling above his opponent in ever faster rings that created concenrated storm fronts with the friction from his passing alone. Heated air from the thoroughly abused sound barrier mixed with the cooler surrounding atmosphere, creating massive cloud formations reminiscent of the absolute most destructive of hurricanes.

X

Across the desert, a skeleton king stirred in his white palace.

In a lonely cavern, a pair of wolves grinned excitedly, the lethargy of the larger momentarily gone in their shared pride for a new friend. "Soon, Starrk, let's go see him soon," the smaller said.

Off in the mountainous crags a big-horned sheep stared at the forming clouds. "The world is changing," she whispered to herself.

X

Dordoni stared up at the sky, knowing he had no choice but to weather this storm. With an injured wing, there wasn't much he could do to escape the massive cloud formation. He did his best to reinforce his hierro to the best of his abilities while waiting for whatever came next.

With a roar of "El Aguacero!" the sky split open. The clouds, and all the millions of bala housed within, descended like the downpour the skill was named for. The bala were barely worth noticing individually. In truth, they weren't worth calling proper bala at all. They were concentrated, but only held the width of a large raindrop, not even worth noticing to a powerful adjuchas like Dordoni. And yet, like raindrops, the descended in the millions, all centered around him with the roaring winds to guide their general trajectory.

'He's gone…' Dordoni thought desperately even as his hierro began to dissolve under the constant barrage. Beneath him, he could see the corrosive reiryoku of his opponent erode away at the desert, carving out a "lake" that would stand as a testament to his opponent's power. Worse than the slow death this would inevitably cause was the absolute saturation of the atmosphere. Pesquisa, inquiry, was one of the lesser known abilities of the adjuchas class hollows, one that allowed for the sensing of reiatsu. Lesser known, but oh so vital. Dordoni now flew blind, unable to pierce the veil of navy-blue balas raining down on him. 'A true storm indeed, boy. Well wrought.'

Even as he thought this, the sky rapidly cleared and all "rain" stopped, only to be replaced by a massive cero that struck down like the hammer of an angry god. It ate at him, drilling through his torso and severing the adjuchas' legs from the rest of his body.

"Well wrought, Cameron Gold," he roared as he fell to the earth. "The sky welcomes you!"

X

Time stopped for Anathi. For her and her newfound sisters, the storm was a comforting warmth, an omnipresent pressure that caressed them and whispered that all would be okay. The winds told them that their lord was well and as indomitable as ever. For her especially, the distinct flavor of her master's reiatsu was nearly intoxicating. She _saw_. She saw not only what was, but what the wind would do at his command. Memories of objects. Psychometry, Lord Cameron called it.

'"Object" is a bit of a misnomer though,' Anathi thought to herself. Her power, like everything else post-death, worked off of reishi, spirit particles, in the atmosphere. With enough training, any reiryoku expelled from the body qualified as an "object." She could read the memory and trajectory of her lord's bala and predict the path of La Corriente.

That's why when the reishi surrounding the vulture was drawn into its mouth, she saw what would happen next. One last blast, a cero aimed not at the still invisible dragonfly, but at his servants. At them.

"GET DOWN!" she cried before dropping beneath the treehollow. She allowed herself to fall deep below the desert, well beneath the sands, before clawing both sides of the quartz tree to stop her fall.

Above her, she saw Loly grab her sister and climb down as quickly as she could, her centipede legs granting her purchase against the quartz. Unlike Anathi, if she allowed herself to fall, she had no way of stopping the descent other than smashing into the floor of Menos Forest.

They were too slow. The last thing Anathi saw before the home they'd shared splinter into a million razor fragments was the shocked features of Menoly as the cero engulfed her. Somewhere, she heard Loly shriek in pain.

 **Author's Note**

 **Reiatsu: Spirit pressure exerted by powerful individuals, similar to Haoshoku Haki in One Piece  
Reiryoku: Internal spirit energy  
Reishi: Building blocks of the spirit world.**

 **Honestly, that confused me a lot and I think I misuse some of them in previous chapters so forgive my mistakes.**

 **A note about La Corriente: It can be counterintuitive, but there is nothing keeping him from moving directly backwards. He has spherical vision so it's not as though he's not able to see where he's going. Helicopters can actually do the same thing, except they need to fly using mirrors or rear-facing cameras.**

 **If you want more consistent updates or a say in what stories I write next, or would like to contribute to this hobby of mine, please find me at Pat Reon dot com slash Sorre.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Preface**

 **What's this? An OMW update already? Yeah the rotation was supposed to be Gaming Guardian or Quo Vadis, but I decided that I didn't want to leave a cliffhanger too long so here's part three of Cameron's trial to ascension. I decided to update on a Tuesday just to make it quick. This concludes the three chapter series describing Cameron's ascension.**

 **I was recently told that my pat reon was inactive so if any of you visited the site trying to search me, my apologies. It should be active again.**

 **Chapter 10: Lorde of Sky (Part 3)**

'No,' Anathi thought, paralyzed by the shock of seeing her home explode. 'Nonononono…' "MENOLY!"

With a pained groan, Loly's grip on the quartz wall slipped and she fell towards the forest below. Anathi lashed out an arm in panic, her claws just managing to hook around the centipede at center mass. *Cough* "Fuck," Loly gagged as breath left her lungs.

Anathi hung dangerously from one arm. She looked over Loly and saw that almost a fourth of Loly's body was missing from the tail end, leaving ragged scraps of bone, chitin, and flesh. "Loly, Loly, you've got to get a hold of yourself," she whispered, urgent yet gentle. "I-I can't hold on with one arm."

Slowly, painfully, Loly reached out and took hold of the quartz tree once more. "Y-Yeah, thanks, Anathi." She coughed violently. "Come on, let's go check on Menoly. That fucker, I hope Lord Cameron kills him slowly for that."

Anathi morosely looked up, only to see smoke clearing to reveal the pale moon. "Loly… I don't know if Menoly survived…"

"She did," the centipede hollow insisted. Her tail lashed out violently, waving the stump in the air. "My tail wasn't evaporated, Anathi. I could feel the force tear it away. Menoly's got to have been thrown away somewhere."

Seeing that she wouldn't convince her friend, Anathi sighed and resigned herself to the risky surface venture. 'Please be okay…'

X

Cameron saw red. He saw Dordoni's cero strike the base of the treehollow, reducing it to splinters. He heard the shrieks of pain from his beloved servants and prayed to a Soul King he knew wasn't listening that they'd be fine. Just as he was about to smite Dordoni's crippled form with everything he had, his compound eyes picked up a figure curving in a gentle arc through the smoke and splinters.

"MENOLY!" he roared. He moved faster than he ever had before, ripping through the sky with such speed that thunderclaps resounded in his wake. The vacuum left behind compressed with such force that the air seemed to explode, the reishi in the air colliding into brilliant displays of color. In time that could be measured in microseconds, he arrived next to Menoly's body, flying alongside her and gently guiding her arc to bleed off her momentum.

His many eyes raked over her form to assess the damage. He thanked whatever god was listening that Menoly had the sturdiest hierro of his three servants. It wasn't "reishi-proof" like Anathi's, but her spikes were both her weapons of choice and primary defense. Too slow to maneuver meaningfully, her hierro was her lifeline, literally in this case.

Nonetheless, he winced at the damage. The majority of her spikes were shattered in the concussive blow of a cero, leaving unsightly fragments of jagged bone protruding from her normally pristine back. Her hands, armed with long, but blunt claws more suited for digging than tearing, were missing. 'No doubt she covered her neck,' he thought. He felt a pang of pride that she remembered his lesson, but quashed the emotion with extreme prejudice. 'Not the time.' What truly caught his eye was the massive shard of quartz embedded in her back. Although most of the shrapnel from the exploding quartz were deflected by her quills, this one was evidently too heavy to stop. It was lodged in her upper right shoulder and sank down into her lung.

Far below, in the ruins of their home, he saw Amathi and Loly poke their heads out of the sand. A ways away, he also noticed Dordoni use what was left of his tattered wings to smooth his fall into a glide, but ignored it. He'd pay later. With the telltale buzz of sonido, he appeared just above the hole leading to Menos Forest.

He gave them a quick once over before concluding that they were mostly unhurt. Loly would be complaining about losing a few segments off her tail end, but that wasn't life threatening. He lowered Menoly into the hole using his tail, handing her off to Anathi. "Take her down and sew her wound shut. Use her own quills if you have to," he barked. They saw the dangerous glint in his eyes and obeyed without question.

X

The heavens changed once again. Without any immediate distractions, white hot rage flooded Cameron's mind. When the battle began, he flung his reiatsu so wide that the sky quivered. When he'd used El Aguacero, the clouds rumbled and sang with the rain of a million bala. The howl of the storm declared his presence as surely as any crier. And yet, it all paled before the wrath he felt now.

"DORDONI!" he roared. The heavens split open in response, ringing out to the far corners of Hueco Mundo. The clouds that formed from El Aguacero condensed into a titanic tower of navy-blue reiatsu, almost tangible in density and so high as to scrape the moon. The swirling currents could hardly be called winds anymore. They whipped with the force of tsunamis, crashing against the sands and threatening to crush all lesser hollows. Mountains worth of sand were kicked into the air, only for the constant pressure to send them crashing down like miniature daggers.

Dordoni, nowhere near fully regenerated from Cameron's last assault, was pressed into the dirt, tasting the sands of Hueco Mundo for the first time since his evolution from a gillian. "Heh, this pressure. This presence. Yes, as a king should be," he grunted. The four cyclones he was working to gather again were torn asunder, his control over the wind usurped utterly.

Cameron let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He willed his wrath under chains of iron discipline. All around him, through his thousands of compound eyes, he saw. He saw every particle of reishi that made up the wind and clouds. He saw the vectors of wind and the fronts of hot and cold air. He saw every spec of sand floating in the breeze, reflecting a fragment of the dazzling majesty that was Hueco Mundo's sole celestial body. Then, as though the battle had never happened, the storm was quelled. The winds stilled and the clouds dispersed into mere vapor once more. Once, in a time that seemed like aeons away, he had used his phenomenal control over his reiryoku to create a shell, a shell that would bend light and fool the senses.

Now, he forced every sliver of his own reiryoku back. He dragged along the reishi in the air through gentle currents. All the might of the hurricane, he condensed into a single speck of light, a hyper-dense ball of reishi that shone black, not even light able to pass the sphere. It stood in stark relief against the moon, a manifestation of his fury.

X

He had lost. Dordoni knew this. The superiority of the one called Cameron was indisputable. Heaven itself had chosen its master and it wasn't him. It was no longer his place to contest the victory. The prey may not interrogate the predator; a peasant cannot bring charges against the king.

He knew this. And yet, missing a third of his torso, with wings barely able to hold his weight, ragged breaths leaving his throat in discordant gasps, he smiled. "So be it," he said. "Never will I sit atop the heavens. Never will I rule Hueco Mundo." He forced himself to rise from the sands. Hovering just above the ground, so crippled that even a gillian could prove his end, his voice rose to a thunderous shout. "But I will die to none less than the king! Hear me, Cameron! May my death be the final step to your throne! My soul your crowning jewel!"

He acted on instinct. No one taught him how, but he knew, just as he knew how to fly upon his ascension to adjuchas, that this would end in his final breath. He gathered one last cero to meet his opponent, the new ruler of the sky. He did not build his cero at his beak, like he had so many times before. Instead, he forced his auxiliary heads to form one last time. With five heads acting as foci for his power, his cero gathered at his bloody stumps, the blood from his missing legs trickling into the signature skill of all mature hollows. For one instant, as though in rebellion against his death, Dordoni's power skyrocketed to rival Cameron's own.

"With this, I declare the birth of a new vasto lorde!" he roared, "THE CORONATION OF THE SKY KING!" Then, two streaks of blue met in the middle and the world stood in awe.

X

Cameron's eyes would have widened to saucers if it were possible. The bloody cero was impossible to miss, a skill dreaded by all and until moments earlier, one he'd thought to be unique to the espada. 'Fuck…' he groaned internally. His own cero, now a mere pinprick of deep black, felt worryingly inadequate. 'Seriously? A Gran Rey Cero? How?' He thought about mixing in his own blood to do the same, but unlike Dordoni, he wasn't on his deathbed. If it blew up in his face, he had a lot more to lose so he restrained himself.

Two cero released at the same instant, becoming twin beams that met between earth and sky.  
"Raahhh!" Cameron roared as he poured every drop of reiryoku he could spare into the attack.

From just above the desert floor, Dordoni did the same. Uncaring of what was left of his own life, a life he knew could be measured in minutes anyway, he gave the cero all he had. A singular blow that contained the very essence of Dordoni's soul. The Gran Rey Cero, as weakened as he was, burst forth like the Tower of Babel, roaring towards Cameron like a thousand lions. At the same time, Aire Cero, Cameron's signature attack, streaked towards Dordoni with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. For one moment, the two attacks stood equal. Then, inch by inch, Dordoni's gave way.

As though digging through a solid object, Aire Cero bore into its much larger counterpart, its whirling drill of wind disrupting the attack and forcing the Gran Rey Cero to disperse in every direction but straight up. Reishi filled the air so thickly that even Cameron's naturally superb vision was rendered useless. But that was okay. Seeing wasn't that important at that moment. Cameron bit back a pained hiss as he felt the exhaustion of so many high level techniques get to him. He could feel his attack inch its way to Dordoni and with one final shout, he felt it pierce through.

As quickly as it had come, the maelstrom of clashing reiatsu ceased. The avian hollow's depleted form struck the desert floor with a dull thump that rang loud in the sudden silence. Slowly, the high of victory dawned on him and he let out a triumphant shout.

"Whooooo! Hahahahaha," he couldn't help but laugh. Through it all, he wondered in the back of his mind if Anathi would worry about his sanity for this. That brought him short. "Anathi," he whispered, "everyone…"

Flying low, he clutched Dordoni's form in his tail and claws and made his way to the treehollow. There, he could see his servants crawl outside, first Anathi, then Loly and Menoly supporting one another.

"Lord Cameron!" he'd never been happier to hear the little penguin's chirping. She reached out to envelop him in a hug but he stopped her short, tossing Dordoni's body onto the desert floor.

"Not now, Anathi," he said tiredly. "Menoly, Loly, eat."

"Heh, even now, with your ascension so close, you think of your servants?" Dordoni's voice rasped, causing the surrounding adjuchas to startle.

"You're still alive?" Cameron groaned.

"I will not let myself feed anyone less than the Sky King."

Cameron sighed and grabbed the back of Dordoni's skull with his pincer-like tail. He thrust upwards, cracking his tail like a whip. "Shut up," he droned, "I'm the victor, I can do whatever I want. Losers don't get to bitch about what I do with them."

"Grk!" the unexpected movement snapped Dordoni's neck, his hierro unable to handle any more abuse. It took some doing, but Cameron used his mandibles to saw off the would-be privaron's neck and tossed them the rest.

"Split this between you two, Menoly, Loly. You need to regenerate as soon as possible."

"But, Lord Cameron," Menoly started, the hedgehog shyly poking at the now thoroughly dead hollow. He could see drool gather around the corners of her lips, her unwillingness to slight her master the only thing keeping her from digging in. Likewise, Loly looked hungrily at her share.

He let out another tired sigh. "Enough," he said, "I said eat. I have the mask and that's where most of the reiryoku is anyway so it's fine."

Reluctantly, with Anathi proudly standing guard, the three dug into their meals. One by one, she could feel the reiryoku reserves of her sisters rise. She watched as Loly's elongated body regained some lost segments. Menoly's arms regenerated, blunt claws scraping against her now pristine quills. But while her sisters merely regained what they had lost, her lord had evolved.

"Guuh," he grunted in mild discomfort. The pale hollow mask that covered his face bubbled like a witch's cauldron before expanding in every direction. In moments, her master was covered in a bony layer, a pale-white statue.

"""Lord Cameron!""" the three cried. They surrounded him, trying to figure out what was happening. There, they would stay, guarding against any and all, for three days.

X

"I-Is it over, Lady Nelliel?" he asked. His voice was low and gruff, almost too masculine to be showing such overt displays of anxiety.

"No, Dondochakka," the bighorn sheep said lightly. She pouted, the cute expression unsuiting of a vasto lorde. "And I told you to stop calling me 'lady!'"

"But La-" his partner froze under his lady's icy glare, "Nelliel, the storm has subsided."

She grinned. Her friends were such quick learners. Well, one of them… "Storm?" she tilted her head curiously, "what storm? That was the _calm_."

X

"Ggio!" Barragan's voice rumbled throughout the palace. As quickly as he could, a saber-toothed tiger bounded into the throneroom.

"Your majesty!" the tiger crouched before his king in as unthreatening a manner as possible. Hollows have died for far, far less.

"Go and find out what caused the storm," he growled. "Bring it back that it may bow before the king."

Ggio sweatdropped. Whoever the two were that were fighting, he was sure, he was no match. Whoever _won_ would almost certainly be able to crush him without a thought. He might as well try to make them laugh to death. Yet, he could not speak the words he wished to say. He knew what it meant to tell his king no. "Of course, your majesty," he said, letting none of his internal panic show. "If I may ask a boon?"

"Ask."

"I believe that a proper show of force would be appropriate, your majesty. I request permission to take your strongest servants to show them what the army of the King of Hueco Mundo looks like."

Barragan raised a skeletal hand to his chin as though scratching a beard that would never grow. "Hmm," he mulled it over, "yes I like that idea. Go, and make sure he knows the name of King Baraggan Louisenbairn!"

X

At the edge of the desert, a lone human girl bounced enthusiastically. "Starrk! Starrk! Did you feel that?"

A scruffy looking young man turned over onto his side lazily. "Ugh, pipe down, Lilynette. I can hear you fine." He stuck a pinkie finger into his ear, digging out some of the sand.

"Yeah, but did you feel that? He's finally done it. That last burst was like a vasto!"

"Not _like_ ," Starrk yawned, " _is_ , is a vasto. Whoever he fought, he won. He's going to eat. Soon, he'll be a vasto lorde."

"Like us!" she cheered.

Her grin was infectious and the strongest man in Hueco Mundo couldn't help but grin right back. "Yes, like us."

"Woohoo! Someone else can help me move your lazy ass!"

"Hey now, that's uncalled for," he said as he stood. "Besides, he said he wanted to train up his little servants. You wouldn't want to take him from his friends, would you?"

Lilynette's face fell at that. "No…" she pouted.

"Don't worry. It won't be long before those three can stand with us too. Then, we'll have four new friends instead of just one."

X

"This is boring," Loly whined as she slumped in the sand. Her insectile body was splayed out in the cool sand to maximize her exposure to the night air.

"Then leave," Anathi scowled, standing alert, "I'll just tell Lord Cameron you left your post."

"Oh, you're such a bitch."

"Come on, you two, no fighting. Lord Cameron would be mad at us." Menoly tried to play peacemaker.

Anathi sighed. "She's right, Loly. No fighting. No complaining. It's only been three days. What's three days to immortals like us?"

"Yeah you're ri-"

*CRACK* A loud crackling noise cut her off. The three of them jumped to attention, scanning the surroundings for an attack that wasn't coming. Then, they turned as one to what they realized was the source of the noise. *CRACK* another.

The world trembled. The pressure that descended upon all of Hueco Mundo was more than twice that of the pressure felt only three days ago. Except this time, the reiatsu had only one distinct signature. All around the world, every reishi-sensitive hollow either dove for cover or perked their nose in surprise.

A tornado surrounded the three girls, the winds whipping so quickly that the dislodged sand appeared to be solid. And yet, not a feather or quill was ruffled or smudged in sand. The pressure that so many found suffocating held them with an almost gentle caress. Squinting, they could see the shell of bone fall away and crumble to nothing. Their lord had finally awakened. A new vasto lorde had risen.

X

Nelliel laughed joyously as the untamed pressure of a newly minted vasto lorde pressed her friends to the floor. "~I told you so~"

 **Author's Note**

 **I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Cameron's been referring to the trio as his servants. He is a benign monarch, but he's still a monarch. It's one of the mental shifts necessary for an adjuchas to become a vasto lorde and he's fulfilled that here.**

 **As for how Dordoni can move with a punctured wing and half his torso missing, remember that for a hollow, the most important organ is the mask. The mask is their "heart" and everything else is auxiliary to that. Missing huge chunks of their body and still fighting is par for the course in Hueco Mundo and regenerator type hollows have been shown in canon to instantly regrow entire limbs. It's not that far a stretch to say Dordoni can fly with his willpower alone.**

 **Yes, I know, "Sorre, how dare you give Dordoni the Gran Rey Cero? It's unique to the espada and he isn't one yet!" More on this in later chapters, but this is for all of you canon purists out there so I don't get swamped with reviews to this effect. More will come explaining just what the hell that move actually is and why it's available to any higher level adjuchas or stronger, not just espada. As for how Cameron beat it, there are a few reasons. First, Dordoni was already dying. Even if Gran Rey Cero is generally stupidly overpowered, that power has to come from somewhere and Dordoni was all tapped out. Second, it's a matter of density and concentration of reishi within an area. An ocean wave has tremendous force, just by the volume of water, but it's distributed so widely that a child can play in it. Dordoni's cero is a bit like that while Cameron's is more akin to a water drill. Less water, but concentrated in such a small area that it can cut damn near everything.**

 **No, Starrk's comment was not a promise to make the three vasto lordes. Cameron was able to withstand Starrk's aura before he ascended, remember.**

 **If you'd like to support my writing, please visit Pat reon dot com slash Sorre.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Preface**

 **Someone asked me why this is fic has the shortest chapters of all my fics. Simply put, it's my least favorite. I'm not a fan of Bleach because I think Kubo is a shit writer who had a decent premise, kind of like Rowling. I know, I know, I just offended most of my readership, but it's my opinion.**

 **Regardless, here is the conclusion of the Lorde of Sky mini-arc. This mini-arc serves as the climax of the first major arc that I've unofficially labeled as "pre-Espada" for obvious reasons.**

 **Chapter 11: Lorde of Sky (Part 4)**

Ggio gasped. It felt as though Atlas had dropped the Vault of the Sky and tossed it his way. Around him, the dozen elites of his king's army fared no better, each of them barely clinging to consciousness. He had hoped that a group of thirteen would be more than enough to overwhelm his opponent. Under any normal circumstance, against even an amazingly powerful adjuchas, it would have been sufficient. When he had approached his peers with the king's directive, many had complained that it was overkill even. Under any normal circumstance, he would have agreed. And yet, his fears had been confirmed. His fur was standing on end, his tail lashing with nervous tension. Under any normal circumstance, his opponent wouldn't be a fucking vasto lorde. He feared only his king would be a proper match.

"Ggio," Charlotte muttered, "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, somehow managing to not show his internal turmoil. They were nearing the location of the previous storm and every step sent his survival instinct warring against his loyalty, screaming at him to run away.

He overheard more than one desire to flee, but quashed the assenting thoughts within himself. "Listen up," he shouted with more courage than he truly had, "We can't flee. Walk forward and you might live. Flee and the his majesty will certainly hunt you to the ends of Hueco Mundo for your treason."

Respect was one way to earn loyalty. Love was another. To Barragan, neither were familiar concepts. Fear, now that was an old friend.

A mere hour of hard running later, their raid party arrived at the broken ruins of what must have been a giant quartz tree, not a sign of a hollow to be found. Ggio, for once in his life, was happy to have failed a mission.

X

Barragan scoffed even as the pressure of a new ascension hammered against Las Noches. Perhaps the new runt would be a decent challenge in time, but for the moment, he would remain idle. 'Even the wind must bow to time…'

X

When Cameron next opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the radiant moon, that single source of beauty and light in an otherwise melancholy world. He couldn't marvel at its beauty for long before three bodies tackled him to the ground.

"""Lord Cameron!"""

It was only the familiarity of their reiryoku that kept him from lashing out impulsively. "Oof," he breathed out dramatically, one hand going to his forehead and another flailing in the air in mock defeat. "You fiends! Help! I am being assaulted by ravenous beasts!"

He suddenly stopped his flailing, mesmerized by his hands. "Umm… Lord Cameron?" Anathi started, but he didn't hear her. His hands. _His hands._ _He had hands._

"Anathi," his voice came out a bit raspy, seemingly from disuse, but without the telltale insectile twang of his adjuchas form. It was deeper now, firmer in a way that demanded respect. Even still, his voice had a slight tremor to it, a subvocal vibration that made the air dance with every word.

"Yes, Lord Cameron?"

"How long have I been out?" He nudged for them to get off of him and they did so with a bit of reluctance. He noticed that Anathi was only a little smaller than him now. He'd shrunk considerably. Menoly, the giant hedgehog and pangolin cross, towered a good head taller than him. Loly… were he still human, she would have been the stuff of nightmares.

"Three days, Lord Cameron," Anathi chirped dutifully, nuzzling her head into his chest. He absently scratched her feathered crest, the part of her brow she claimed was sensitive, bone mask be damned, and basked in her quiet thrumming.

"Ah, not too long, I hope?"

Anathi's eyes opened marginally. "Loly was complaining~" she sang.

"You bitch! I was not!"

He chuckled as the two devolved into their usual bickering. When he had enough, he grasped the penguin adjuchas by her beak. "Anathi?"

"Mmph, Nmmugh Camuph?" she mumbled.

He held her aloft by her beak and watched her squirm in discomfort. It wouldn't hurt the durable adjuchas, but nor was it a pleasant feeling. "No one likes a tattletale," he said. He turned to the nervous centipede. "And you, Loly."

"I-I'm sorry, Lord Cameron!" she shouted even as she bowed far enough to bury a part of her head into the sand.

He set the penguin back on the desert floor then reached out to pet the centipede. "There is nothing to apologize for. Thank you for waiting," he said. "Three days is a long time to just stand guard."

"I-It was nothing, Lord Cameron," she squawked. "We would've stayed for a year if we had to!" Next to her, Menoly nodded vigorously.

"Good to know I have friends I can count on." He moved on to the main puzzle of the day: "Now… what do I look like to you?"

Some days, Cameron seriously resented the lack of mirrors in Hueco Mundo. He wasn't about to head into the human world just so he can steal a mirror from some poor schmuck's house without getting more accustomed to his new powers or even his changed body-type.

This little game of "What Does Cameron Look Like Now?" quickly turned into an exploration of just how little the three girls knew about the world. By the end of it, he made a mental note to teach them reiatsu suppression as soon as possible so they could take a small educational field trip to the human world.

He gathered that he was mostly humanoid in size and shape, a few inches taller than the average adult but well within the normal range. What was formerly the exoskeleton of the largest dragonfly in existence served now as his armor, clothing him from head to toe in dense chitin. Rather than appear bulky, the armor appeared lean, form-fitting in a way that similar garb found in the human world was not. His chest plate was narrow, with smooth spikes curving out from his back and towards the sky. His armor was colored a deep navy blue like his cero, darkening to midnight black towards the edges to give it an ominous accent.

His arms were slightly longer than a human's, but still rather heavily muscled to keep them from looking lanky. It was as though four of his limbs just condensed into two extra thick arms. He was grateful to find that his hands possessed the full five digits. Each hand was encased in overlapping armor, seemingly designed to give them a claw-like appearance without getting in the way of movement. Each finger ended in a wicked talon and he was surprised to find that the claws of his index and middle fingers were significantly longer than the rest. Upon closer inspection, they reminded him of the claws a dragonfly would use to cling to trees or secure prey mid-flight. His feet were armored similarly, with claws sharp enough and long enough to eviscerate elephants.

By far the most unusual part of him was the tail. His tail was reminiscent of his time as a dragonfly. It was as long as his the rest of his body, and segmented. It ended in a pincer-like grip that he had used so often in lieu of hands in his adjuchas form. He hadn't expected to keep it, though he was admittedly rather fond of it now. He gave it an experimental twitch then used it to prop himself into the air. "Sturdy enough to stand on it," he murmured, "probably strong enough to use as a spear too."

All this, he gathered by looking himself over. What he could not do however was see his own mask or his back. At first, he tried to get his cute monstrosities to describe the shape of his mask, but all he got was "sort of like a skull," as though that wasn't obvious already. He eventually got them to draw pictures in the sand. He received three squiggly messes that wouldn't have been amiss on a Rorschach test. Clearly, none of his minions were artistically gifted. Still, the three samples were enough to give him a general understanding of his own appearance. On the plus side, he had his horn still, the same horn he used to spear prey while flying at supersonic speeds. The rest of his body had shrunk, but his horn seemingly had not, or not as much, because it just looked ridiculous on him. It was a curved blade sharpened to a razor edge that sprouted from the forehead of his mask. It extended so high that without it, he'd lose almost two heads off his full height. He sighed, he could hear the overcompensation jokes already. Running a hand through his face, he was surprised to find that he now lacked the giant compound eyes of an insect. His eyes were compound still, that much was certain from his disjointed vision, but they were more appropriately sized for a human.

He allowed himself an amused grin as the three adjuchas argued over whose picture was better. Once he'd had enough, he lightly bopped their heads with balls of wind. "No fighting, you three. Now, someone tell me what my eyes look like."

"Silver?"

"It's a dark blue. Where'd you get silver?"

"I… I think they're changing color, you two," Menoly said. "They shimmer like bits of sand."

"Makes sense. I have compound eyes still…" he thought aloud. "But when I was an adjuchas, I had a much bigger range of vision."

"Why would you get weaker in any way after becoming a vasto lorde?" Loly asked bluntly.

Going off a hunch, he channeled a bit of reiryoku into his eyes. He didn't notice his jaw hit the floor as the world opened up around him. He could see straight through his skull to the dazzling moon above and count the grains of sand caught beneath his claws. His spherical vision was back, with more clarity than ever before. "Holy shit, I have the Byakugan," he whispered.

"What's the Bakugan?" Anathi asked.

"It's just a fancy word for eyes that can see through things," he simplified. "I can look at everything at once right now." 'Although, I can't see chakra… I mean, chakra doesn't even exist here though so…' He confirmed that he couldn't see through objects besides his own body and shut out the power. The disorientation from his shrinking visual range took him aback for a moment; that would take some time to get used to.

He switched between the visual fields a few more times then moved on to his back. He was disappointed at first that his wings were gone. It made no sense for a dragonfly vasto lorde to keep the tail but not the wings after all. Moments later, he noticed four crescent ridges of vibrant blue that ran along his shoulder blades, two per side. Like his eyes before, he channeled reiryoku into them and marveled as wings made entirely of wind and expelled reiatsu lit up the sky in a blaze of navy blue. The ridges had expanded to cover the top of each wing, providing a sort of razor sharp outline that could be used for bladed attacks as well as flight. He thought that they might have come from eating the soul of a powerful adjuchas aligned to the same element as himself, but he'd never truly know. Regardless, he would never need to shield his wings or make large maneuvers to avoid attacks that might tear them again. So long as the air existed and he had reiatsu to spare, they would manifest as many times as need be.

He then withdrew all reiatsu and suppressed his power as best as he could. "Anathi, can you tell how strong I am now?"

She looked puzzled at the question, but expanded her pesquisa anyway then shook her head. "I can barely feel you, Lord Cameron. You feel like you're about as weak as a hollow in Menos Forest."

He nodded, satisfied for the moment. Better control would come with time, but it was nice to know that his control wasn't totally shot from the massive increase in strength. "Come on then. I think we've stayed here long enough."

"Where are we going?" Loly asked as her lengthy body scurried next to him.

"I don't know, but staying here is just begging to be found and I'd like to avoid killing anyone who comes by with more courage than sense."

X

Weeks and months passed. Soon enough, the four of them accustomed themselves to their newly nomadic lifestyle. Each day, they would travel for dozens of miles while simultaneously honing their reiatsu control. By limiting the amount of passively released reiatsu, they could avoid detection from hollows without refined pesquisa. The skill also doubled as a way to practice their hierro. After all, reiryoku that wasn't released as reiatsu had to go somewhere so Cameron figured they may as well channel it into their skins.

With their improved staminas, even sleep became something of a formality done almost as much for leisure as for genuine rest. The moon shone on and days and weeks blended into a muddled mess. Had it been a week since they huddled into a hastily made bowl of sand? Perhaps a month? Time ceased to matter and merely Cameron's sense of foreboding drove them to get stronger.

Cameron himself did not stay idle. He worked out unique training plans for each of them and did not neglect his own. His new body, while exponentially more powerful, was also alien after having spent over a century as an insect. Rather than create new techniques, he focused on improving the most basic of skills available to hollows, honing them to their utmost. His pesquisa, combined with his pseudo Byakugan, gave him an intimate awareness of everything. The wind itself acted as an extended sense of touch.

He also took to expanding his vision, his "mini-Byakugan," as often as possible. At this point, it felt _wrong_ to have a regular human's field of vision. He also did his best to relearn his trick with invisibility that he possessed as an adjuchas. As a massive dragonfly, it was of limited use because so few opponents could hit a flying target effectively anyway, but now that he'd be facing much more capable opponents, it would only grow more important.

Whenever possible, he tried to incorporate his own training into that of his servants'. Loly focused on making her venom more potent by infusing reiatsu into it, eating away at the reiatsu inherent in hierro. Much to her reluctance, she practiced on him, giving him the chance to reinforce his own body to extreme levels while teaching Loly a technique that could hurt even a vasto lorde. For the moment, it took her far too long to concentrate that much venom and she needed multiple bites in the same place to hurt him, but her venom was becoming more dangerous by the day.

He also worked on Anathi's predictive skills by having her track his sonido. She was a relatively sedentary hollow, meaning her lack of mobility would be a major disadvantage. She could "slide" on reiatsu, but that wasn't always going to be an option. In their little game, he would make as many rapid turns as he could without La Corriente while she tried to use her psychometry to tag him with a bala. He literally traveled faster than a bala, so she had to focus on where he was going to be rather than where he was, something that would normally be impossible given his erratic movements.

Finally, he and Menoly worked together to improve his reaction time and Menoly's ranged option. She was firmly the least versatile of the three adjuchas, having little to boast about but the basic hierro and a general spray and pray attack using her quills. While he'd love to develop new techniques for her, he wasn't quite sure how. So, instead of a diverse skill set, he decided to make her an expert at one thing: rapid fire. He had her fire at him while he deflected the arrows with his hands. He remembered that when Ishida first got his powers back with help from his dad, named silver sparrow or somesuch, he was able to fire 1,200 arrows per volley. He swore that by the time he was through with her, she'd be able to exceed that limit. It also had the side benefit of improving her regeneration by forcing her to regrow her quills quickly.

X

Over time, he grew bolder. As his control over his newly evolved state increased, so too did his desire to test his upper limits. His new affinity for wind could only be best described as "macroaerokinesis," the manipulation of air on the scale of entire cities and ecosystems.

He sighed with practiced boredom as an overly ambitious adjuchas tried to ambush him from the desert floor. It was fairly well done too, its only true mistake in the target selection. Even as a drill-like limb threatened to spear him, he continued to walk leisurely forward.

He yawned. The poor adjuchas had a single second to look affronted by the action before a barrage of quills pierced every vital organ. And the nonvital ones. "You're getting more accurate," he praised. He was the bait, the weakest link in a mediocre group of adjuchas walking through the desert. 'Heh, as Einstein said: "Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity." I guess in the end, hollows are still human.'

He let out a low whistle. "Alright, girls. Let's take a snack break for the moment. You three eat. I'm going to go try something."

Menoly looked up from her kill with a smile on her fuzzy face. "Where are you going?"

"I think it's about time I see just what my new upper limits are." He couldn't keep a wicked grin off his face. With a single nod, he was off.

X

He had no idea if any other hollow had ever mapped the entirety of Hueco Mundo's surface, but whether he was the first or hundredth, he stood in awe regardless. He soared higher than ever before, shedding what paltry hold physics had on him, until even the giant orb of reishi afixed by the Soul King since time immemorial was but an arm's reach away.

Up close, it shone a brilliant silver, a radiant reminder of the beauty found in even the most savage world. Whereas the moon in the human world was a rock reflecting the glory of another, the moon of Hueco Mundo was a condensed orb of reishi, shining with a light that captivated all hollows at one point or another. Even this close, he dared not touch it, an instinctive warning echoing in his mind. He couldn't help but shudder, thinking of the tale of Icarus and the sun.

'What would happen if I absorbed the moon?' he couldn't help but wonder. And yet, he thought better of such a foolish notion. He doubted that his soul would be able to survive such a large infusion, never mind be able to contain it.

No, he turned his gaze back to earth before ambition could override good sense. From here, he could see Las Noches in all its shimmering white. Off to the far south, he could see the Negal Ruins, where Kisuke Urahara would one day take refuge. To the northwest sat what other adjuchas called the Abyss. If anything, he assumed Ulquiorra lived there and resolved to never set foot near the place. To the northeast was a set of craggy hills.

Finally, he got around to the reason he flew so high up. At this altitude, no one should be able to sense his presence. It would be akin to looking at the moon, then trying to pinpoint a singular rock, or even a mountain, on its surface with the naked eye. Taking a deep breath, he filled the air with his reiatsu.

 **Author's Note**

 **Hopefully, I've done a decent job of describing Cameron's vasto state. My god, their growth is hard to describe. Anathi is something of a seer who relies on her precognition and her feathers to avoid or redirect attacks. Loly is a centipede with the best offensive option. Menoly is basically a living shotgun. Simple enough at a glance, but it feels so weird writing the growth of creatures that don't have human biologies though…**

 **Yeah, no new techniques for Cameron. What does being a vasto get you? A lot of reiryoku, sturdier hierro, faster sonido, etc. Basically, I have no reason to believe that techniques in Bleach work like new moves in Pokemon. Evolving into a vasto lorde just makes everything you had before better. So that Aguacero he used against Dordoni? Now go look up Super Typhoon Tip and come talk to me about what macroaerokinesis can look like coming from someone powerful enough to crush living souls by just standing next to them.**

 **Hmm another cliffhanger? Not really. I just got tired of writing while trying to play catch-up for the days I missed in my normal schedule. On the plus side, two of my good friends got married. Much love.**

 **Pat Reon dot com slash Sorre**


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